Geochemical Fingerprints: Implications for Provenance and Depositional Settings

Geochemical fingerprinting plays a pivotal role in sedimentary geology by offering insights into the provenance, transport history, and depositional environments of clastic sediments. This article explores the theoretical background, methods, and practical implications of geochemical signatures in sediments, with a specific focus on how these fingerprints help reconstruct tectonic settings, source rock composition, and sedimentary processes. This study highlights the technique which integrates the analysis of major, trace, and rare earth elements (REEs), as well as isotopic ratios, to reconstruct the geological evolution from source to sink. Elemental concentrations such as SiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, K₂O, and TiO₂, alongside isotopic systems like ^87Sr/^86Sr and ^143Nd/^144Nd, are used to characterize distinct depositional settings. For instance, fluvial environments exhibit high SiO₂ due to quartz enrichment and mechanical sorting, deltaic environments show elevated Al₂O₃ and K₂O reflecting fine-grained aluminosilicate input, while marine settings are marked by high Fe₂O₃ and TiO₂ content, indicating longer transport, biogenic input, and diagenetic modifications. Despite its robustness, geochemical fingerprinting is not without limitations. Diagenetic alterations and post-depositional processes can obscure primary chemical signatures, particularly in carbonate-rich or hydrothermally altered sediments. Additionally, sediment mixing from multiple sources may complicate interpretation, requiring integrated approaches that combine petrography, mineralogy, and geochronology with geochemistry. Nonetheless, when carefully applied, geochemical signatures offer a powerful toolkit to distinguish felsic versus mafic source rocks, infer tectonic settings (e.g., passive versus active margins), and reconstruct paleoenvironments and sediment transport pathways. Advances in analytical precision and data processing continue to enhance the reliability of geochemical fingerprinting, reinforcing its central role in unravelling Earth’s sedimentary and tectonic history, and in understanding landscape evolution across geological timescales. Over all, by integrating major, trace, and rare earth element (REE) analyses, researchers can draw comprehensive conclusions about geological histories that span from source to sink.