The fabric of a consolidating clayey sediment column, ODP site 697

Abstract

Reorientation of randomly arranged particles of this fine-grained, high-porosity (70%-75%) sediment occurs very gradually: porosity decreases to only about 50% at a depth of 318 m, because of the very fine-grained nature of the sediment and the presence of extremely fine-grained smectite, which imparts a very low permeability even at porosities of 50%. -from Authors