TEXTURAL - HEAVY MINERALS CHARACTERIZATION OF FORESHORE - BACKSHORE SEDIMENTS, MARSA ALAM- WADI AL JIMAL, RED SEA COASTAL ZONE, EGYPT

Grain size processing and heavy minerals separation carried out on 22 and 25 representative samples of
foreshore and backshore sediments respectively collected from the Coastal zone between Marsa Alam and
Wadi El-Jimal. The intertidal sediments are chiefly coarse-grained (15 samples), moderately (4 samples)
to poorly sorted (15 samples), symmetrical (6 samples) to coarse-skewed (9 samples) and very leptokurtic
to very platykurtic. The beach sediments are medium (11 samples) to coarse-grained (8 samples),
moderately well to poorly sorted, symmetrical (9 samples) to coarse-skewed (11 samples) and very
leptokurtic to very platykurtic.
The average total heavy mineral contents in the (0.250-0.125 mm) fine sand fraction of both sediments
are 28.10% and 16.90% respectively, and in the (0.125-0.0.63 mm) very fine sand fraction are 52.95% and
25.64% respectively. The heavy minerals identified are predominantly iron-bearing minerals (magnetite
and goethite), titanium-bearing minerals (sphene and rutile), pyroxene, barite, biotite, plagioclase, cetrine,
sillimanite, garnet, apatite, fluorite, tourmaline, topaz and olivine.
The gabbroic, dolerite, basaltic rocks, alkali feldspar granites, granodiorites, tonalite, quartz diorite,
monzogranite, syenogranites and metamorphic rock assemblages encountered in Wadi Alam, Wadi
Samadai, Wadi Ghadir and Wadi El- Jimal are the main source for the detected heavy minerals.