Introduction to the special issue "Actualistic Models of Sediment Generation"

Conceptual models in sedimentary petrology that relate verticaland lateral compositional signatures during the filling of sedimentarybasins to their internal and external control factors have beendeveloped in the 80'ies and 90'ies of the last century. Althoughrefined petrographic and geochemical analyses have focussed ondeciphering complex events in time and space, such as tectonic evolutionof source terranes, changes in sediment dispersal patterns, orpalaeoclimate fluctuations, quantitativemodels are still in their infancy,despite a long history of research. One reason for this state of affairs isthe strong interdisciplinary nature of the subject matter; another isthe lack of appropriate modelling tools capable of dealing with thecomplex nature of sediment properties. The recent proliferation ofquantitative data-acquisition techniques, coupled with progress indata processing and modelling approaches, has led to the emergenceof a new field of study aimed at solving the fundamental problem ofreconstructing mass transfer from source areas to sedimentary basins.The term “sediment generation” acts as a convenient umbrella for thecomplex web of processes acting between source and sink.