Evaporite deposits in modern marine environments are largely restricted to coastal regions, such as evaporite lagoons and sabkha mudflats. However, evaporite successions in the stratigraphic record indicate that precipitation of evaporite minerals has at times occurred in more extensive marine settings.
Platform evaporites
In arid regions the restriction of the circulation on the inner ramp/shelf can lead to the formation of extensive platform evaporites. On a gently sloping ramp a sand shoal can partially isolate a zone of very shallow water that may be an area of evaporite precipitation; the subtidal zone here often merges into a low-energy mudflat coastline. Shelf lagoons behind rims formed by reefs or sand shoals can create similar areas of evaporite deposition, although the barrier formed by a reef usually allows too much water circulation. Evaporite units deposited on these platforms can be tens of kilometres across.
Evaporitic basins (saline giants)
Evaporite sedimentation occurs only in situations where a body of water becomes partly isolated from the ocean realm and salinity increases to supersaturation point and there is chemical precipitation of minerals. This can occur in epicontinental seas or small ocean basins that are connected to the open ocean by a strait that may become blocked by a fall in sea level or by tectonic uplift of a barrier such as a fault block. These are called barred basins and they are distinguished from lagoons in that they are basins capable of accumulating hundreds of metres of evaporite sediment. To produce just a metre bed of halite a column of seawater over 75 m deep must be evaporated, and to generate thick succession of evaporite minerals the seawater must be repeatedly replenished. Deposition of the thick succession can be produced in three ways each of which will produce characteristic patterns of deposits.
- A shallow-water to deep-basin setting exists where a basin is well below sea level but is only partly filled with evaporating seawater, which is periodically replenished. The deep-water setting will be evident if the basin subsequently fills with seawater and the deposits overlying the evaporites show deep marine characteristics such as turbidites.
- A shallow-water to shallow-basin setting is one in which evaporites are deposited in salterns but continued subsidence of the basin allows a thick succession to be built up. The deposits will show the characteristics of shallow-water deposition throughout.
- A deep-water to deep-basin setting is a basin filled with hypersaline water in which evaporite sediments are formed at the shallow margins and are redeposited by gravity flows into deeper parts of the basin. Normally graded beds generated by turbidites and poorly sorted deposits resulting from debris flows are evidence of redeposition. Other deep-water facies are laminated deposits produced by settling of crystals of evaporite minerals out of the water body. As a basin fills up, the lower part of the succession will be deeper water facies and the overlying succession will show characteristics of shallow-water deposition.
Deep-basin succession can show two different patterns of deposition. If the barred basin is completely enclosed the water body will gradually shrink in volume and area and the deposits that result will show a bulls-eye pattern with the most soluble salts in the basin centre. In circumstances where there is a more permanent connection a gradient of increasing salinity from the connection with the ocean to the furthest point into the basin will exist. The minerals precipitated at any point across the basin will depend on the salinity at the point and may range from highly soluble sylvite (potassium chloride) at one extreme to carbonates deposited in normal salinities at the other. If equilibrium is reached between the inflow and the evaporative loss then stable conditions will exist across the basin and tens to hundreds of metres of a single mineral can be deposited in one place. This produces a teardrop pattern of evaporite basin facies. Changes in the salinity and amount of seawater in the basins result in variations in the types of evaporite minerals deposited. For example, a global sea-level rise will reduce the salinity in the basin and may lead to widespread carbonate deposition. Cycles in the deposits of barred basins may be related to global sea-level fluctuations or possibly due to local tectonics affecting the width and depth of the seaway connection to the open ocean. Organic material brought into the basin during periods of lower salinity can accumulate within the basin deposits and be preserved when the salinity increases because hypersaline basins are anoxic. There are no modern examples of very large, barred evaporitic basins but evidence for seas precipitating evaporite minerals over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres exist in the geological record. These saline giants have over 1000 m thickness of evaporite sediments in them and represent the products of the evaporation of vast quantities of seawater. Evaporite deposits of latest Miocene (Messinian) age in the Mediterranean Sea are evidence of evaporative conditions produced by partial closure of the connection to the Atlantic Ocean. This period of hypersaline conditions in the Mediterranean is sometimes referred to as the Messinian salinity crisis.