Abstract Palaeoenvironmental reconstructive work relies on sediment-texture information as a proxy for particle-transport dynamics. As the integration of data from multiple sources is often sought for studies at the regional scale, a body of work exists that addresses compatibility levels of different analytical approaches. Past insights are derived predominantly from siliciclastic deposits. This study instead addresses standard sieve and laser-diffraction methods of texture analysis on a suite of carbonate beach sands from San Salvador Island, Bahamas. While the near-equant grain shapes of siliciclastic sands generate comparable results between methods, our findings show that laser diffraction tends to overestimate the coarser fractions in carbonate sands, given indiscriminate measurement of elongate particle axes. Peloidal grains that have width-to-length ratios on the order of 0.5 can pass through much smaller mesh sizes when sieved than diffraction would suggest. The resulting deviation in analytical outputs significantly influences measures of skewness, sorting, and other derivative metrics, which vary by up to several Wentworth classes between procedures. Meaningful integration of texture data obtained by different methods is ill-advised when dealing with carbonate beach sands. Similar problems are documented for muddy deposits, wherein platy clay minerals favor size-overestimation by laser diffraction and a size underestimation by settling tube technique. An improved understanding of methodological biases resulting from application of different particle-size methods is needed to help facilitate data-reconciliation efforts. This study provides a glimpse of issues facing the integration of carbonate sand-texture information, troublesome given prevalence of irregular grain shapes.

中文翻译：

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整合不同分析方法生成的碳酸盐砂质地数据的问题：标准筛法和激光衍射法的比较

摘要 古环境重建工作依赖于沉积物质地信息作为粒子传输动力学的代理。由于区域范围内的研究经常寻求整合来自多个来源的数据，因此存在大量工作来解决不同分析方法的兼容性水平。过去的见解主要来自硅质碎屑沉积物。相反，这项研究针对来自巴哈马圣萨尔瓦多岛的一组碳酸盐沙滩沙进行质地分析的标准筛分和激光衍射方法。虽然硅质碎屑砂的近乎相等的颗粒形状在不同方法之间产生了可比较的结果，但我们的研究结果表明，鉴于对细长颗粒轴的不加区分的测量，激光衍射往往会高估碳酸盐砂中较粗的部分。宽长比约为 0.5 的球状颗粒在筛分时可以通过比衍射所建议的小得多的筛孔尺寸。由此产生的分析输出偏差会显着影响偏度、排序和其他衍生指标的测量，这些指标在程序之间的差异多达几个温特沃斯类。在处理碳酸盐海滩砂时，对通过不同方法获得的纹理数据进行有意义的整合是不明智的。泥质矿床也记录了类似的问题，其中片状粘土矿物倾向于通过激光衍射高估尺寸，而通过沉降管技术低估尺寸。需要更好地理解因应用不同粒度方法而导致的方法偏差，以帮助促进数据协调工作。