[Significance]Carbonate factories provide the foundation for forming carbonate depositional systems.They are closely related to marine evolution,elemental cycling,and earth surface processes and are an essential part reflecting the evolution of the Earth system.The transition of carbonate factories often coincides with biological and environmental changes.Over geological time,the change of carbonate factories frequently occurs along with biologi-cal or environmental crises such as mass extinction or the initiation of new life forms such as life explosion or biologi-cal recovery after crisis.Therefore,quantifying the characterization of carbonate factories and their controlling factors is for a deeper understanding of the geological information recorded in carbonate rocks.[Progress]However,most studies on carbonate factories,particularly those from the geological records,are qualitative based on the lithological and microfacies analysis.This study summarizes the research progress in the semi-quantitative to quantitative charac-terization of carbonate factories,combining the introduction of the methods for forward modelling of sedimentary pro-cesses to provide a perspective for the detailed characterization of carbonate factories from a quantitative reconstruc-tion perspective.In addition to providing information on rock components that indicate the ingredients of carbonate factories,statistical analysis of carbonate grains can offer insights into the sedimentary environment by examining pa-rameters such as size,roundness,and sorting.These shape characteristics can serve as quantitative indicators of wa-ter energy and grain transportation processes.Elemental geochemical proxies enable the assessment of environmental parameters such as redox conditions,nutrient levels,and climatic conditions.Isotopic geochemical proxies play a crucial role in reconstructing the evolution of environmental factors such as temperature and seawater carbonate satu-ration.By a combination of multiproxies and sedimentary process modelling,a comprehensive analysis can identify the production process,controlling factors,and evolution of carbonate factories.[Prospects]Based on traditional carbonate sedimentology,studying carbonate factories should deepen our understanding of their controlling factors,particularly the quantitative assessment of factors directly impacting ecosystems.When applying quantitative analysis methods such as sediment transport patterns or hydrodynamic analysis that are established in siliciclastic sedimentary systems,the differences caused by the biogenic nature of certain carbonate sediments compared to siliciclastic sediments need to be considered.Furthermore,models and analysis methods applicable to carbonate grains should be further refined.In addition,when quantitatively evaluating the development of carbonate factories in ancient marine using quantitative carbonate grains statistics or geochemical indicators,there should be a strengthened focus on developing quantitative assessment methods for the level of diagenetic alteration.Further efforts should be directed toward developing and applying in-situ elemental and isotopic testing methods to reduce the impact of diagenesis on geochemical signals.While developing and applying new geochemical proxies for carbonate rocks,the mechanisms of occurrence or fractionation need to be clearly understood to interpret the reflected paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental information accurately.Simultaneously,when studying deep-time evolution and production mecha-nisms of carbonate factories through sedimentary process forward modelling,it is necessary to consider the applicability of parameters obtained from modern environments in deep-time records and account for the impact of syndepositional-early diagenesis and chemical evolution of seawater geochemical evolution in the modelling process.
国家科技期刊平台
NSTL
万方数据
