It is recognized that the ecology of planktonic foraminiferal assemblages provides information about the chemical and physical properties of the water in which they live. Their areal and vertical distributions in the water column and in deep-sea sediments may be used to derive oceanographic and climatic models of Recent and past oceans.
The principal objective of this study was to develop a battery of methodologies for the analysis of texture, grain packing and pore geometry in sands and sandstones. The methodologies developed include: (1) the 'roller micrometer', a machine which sizes grains by their smallest dimension, S; (2) plots of the joint I:S size and S/I form distributions (I is the intermediate grain dimension determined by sieving); (3) a sorting comparator for the visual estimation of sorting in thin sections; (4) 'packing efficiency', the ratio of minimum compactional to depositional porosity; (5) 'floating index', the proportion of grains lacking intergranular contacts; (6) correction of measurement errors in standard thin section packing analyses; (7) transformation, via digitization, of plain sections of samples into matrices of binary (rock vs pore) numbers; and (8) computer processing of the rock-pore matrices using the Fortran IV program PORESTAT which measures numerous parameters including porosity, specific pore surface area, pore size distribution, pore tortuosity, pore orientation, and periodic repetitions in the pore pattern.