27. Heavy Mineral Assemblages and FT-IR Studies of Core Sediments from Arasalar River, Karaikkal, Pondichery Union Territory, India: A Tributary of Cauvery River

The texture of sediments can reveal the source of evolution in river environments. This research was principally conducted to infer the source of the sedimentary process and the effect of the environmental factors on the river sediments in the Arasalar River. To extract the sediment transportation history and distribution of grain size, the research was attempted by analyzing textural properties, heavy mineral, and FT-IR studies of the river debris. The fundamentals of erosion, transportation, and deposition majorly depend on the dynamics of the statistical parameters such as an average or mean (Mz), skewness (Sk_i), standard deviation (σ₁), and kurtosis (K_G). The river's whole basin has extremely coarse to very fine sand that is very poorly sorted to moderately sorted. The sediment exhibited a range of grain sizes, ranging from coarse skewed to extremely fine skewed and had mesokurtic, platykurtic, and leptokurtic characteristics. The analysis of the linear discriminant function indicates that the sediments exhibit dominance in three main processes: fluvial, shallow marine, and turbidity. The beach environment and the presence of shallow, agitated water conditions are observed in the remaining sediment samples. Under CM diagram analysis, the majority of the sediment exhibits the bottom suspension and rolling category. The remaining samples were classified under rolling conditions. The region under consideration exhibits a variety of heavy mineral, including non-opaque and opaque minerals, which can be attributed to their origin in igneous and metamorphic rock formations. The current research focuses on the sediment originating from the Arasalar River, Pondicherry, southern Tamil Nadu, India.