Wavelet transform: a future of rock fabric analysis?

Although twenty years ago fabric was defined as “the complete spatial and geometrical configuration of all those components that make up a deformed rock”, fabric was mainly synonymous with lattice preferred orientation. Very little attention has been paid to the multi-scale geometrical and spatial relationships of the rock components. Fabric quantification, in terms of size, shape, orientation and location, at all scales, is now performed in two dimensions using anisotropic wavelets. As a first example, the wavelets are applied to the famous colour plate of Sander, and the results compared to his Axial Distribution Analysis. Applied to the K-feldspars of a rock section from the Sidobre granite pluton (Montagne Noire, France), the wavelet analysis shows: (i) alignment of grains, resulting from mechanical interactions between grains, and shows that shearing occurred within the crystalline frame; (ii) preferred grain orientation, the classical grain-shape fabric, parallel to the overall mineral lineation; and (iii) small tensional domains, elongate perpendicular to the lineation, infilled by the residual melt just before total crystallisation, attesting to the stretching nature of the mineral lineation. The future of rock fabric analysis will come from new steps in understanding the processes acting during fabric development along with a further development of wavelet analysis using high resolution three-dimensional fabric data.