Resumen de Distribución de facies recientes en los fondos de la Bahía de Cádiz

José Manuel Gutiérrez Mas, Mohamed Achab, J. M. Parrado Román, José Pedro Moral Cardona, Ángel Sánchez Bellón, Juan Luis González Caballero , Francisco de Borja López Aguayo

• The distribution of facies in the bottoms of the Bay of Cádiz is studied in a preliminary phase of a wider study about the sedimentary exchange between the continent and continental margin. Two sectors are distinguished, the inner one is clayely-muddy and the external one is sandy, showing the grain size distribution the main transport path of the ebb tidal current and of those generated by the storm wave. The quartz is majority in sandy areas and phyllosilicates in muddy sectors. The clay fraction is ilite> kaolinite smectite = ilite-smectite (I-S) = chlorite. The sedimentation rate is controled by the supplyes of Guadalete river in the northern margin. To the south, the lack of rivers is supplemented for the action of tidal currents that drain the inner areas of the bay and by the contributions of the emerged tidal flat through tidal inlets and surficial drainage waters. The sediments deposited in the bottom of the lagoon, after their remotion by the east and south wave, are transported toward the external bay zone by the ebb current, leaving a muddy trace which follows the morphology of the coast and bottom until to reach the continental shelf.