Physical properties of ODP Sites 123-765 and 123-766

During Ocean Drilling Program Leg 123, two sites were drilled in the deep Indian Ocean. Physical properties were measured in soft Quaternary and Lower Cretaceous sediments to relatively fresh, glass-bearing pillow lavas and massive basalts. Porosities ranged from 89% near the seafloor to 1.6% for the dense basalts. This self-consistent set of measurements permitted some descriptive models of physical properties to be more rigorously tested than before. Predictive relationships between porosity and compressional-wave velocity have generally been based upon the Wyllie time average equation. However, this equation does not adequately describe the actual relationship between these two parameters, and many have attempted to improve it. In most cases, models were derived by testing them against a set of data representing a relatively narrow range of porosity values. Similarly, the use of the Wyllie equation has often been justified by a pseudolinear fit to the data over a narrow range of porosity values. The limitations of the Wyllie relationship have been re-emphasized here. A semi-empirical acoustic impedance equation is developed that provides a more accurate porosity-velocity transform, using realistic material parameters, than has hitherto been possible. A closer correlation can be achieved with this semi-empirical relationship than with more theoretically based equations. In addition, a satisfactory empirical equation can be used to describe the relationship between thermal conductivity and porosity. If enough is known about core sample lithologies to provide estimates of the matrix and pore water parameters, then these predictive equations enable one to describe completely the behavior of a saturated rock core in terms of compressional-wave velocity, thermal conductivity, porosity, and bulk density.

(Table 2) Geochemistry of K-feldspars and associated plagioclase phenocrysts and rims at DSDP Legs 69, 52, 51 and 19

Basalts from some holes of the Deep Sea Drilling Project contain secondary K-feldspar which forms pseudomorphs after calcic (>76% An) Plagioclase cores, whereas Plagioclase of rims and microlites (68-74% An) remains unaltered. In basalts of Hole 504B two such grains with relics of Plagioclase in the central parts of phenocysts were recovered. The composition of the Plagioclase rims and of non-replaced phenocrysts is An79-81; the composition of relics is An83. The An and Ab contents of the K-feldspar is higher than in K-feldspar from altered basalt in Hole 418A in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bermuda Rise. Replacement of plagioclases by K-feldspar evidently is caused by oxygen-rich nearbottom sea water penetrating into basalts. The temperature interval of K-feldspathization is probably in the range 30 to 80°C, more-calcic Plagioclase being replaced by K-feldspar at higher temperatures.