A Color Guide to the Petrography of sandstone ebook is available to be downloaded here now.
- Title: A Color Guide to the Petrography of sandstone
- Author: Dana S. Ulmer-Scholle (Author), Peter A. Scholle (Author), Juergen Schieber and Robert J. Raine (Author)
- Publisher: AAPG
- Pages: 544
This book covers the microscopic study of sandstones, mudstones and associated lithologies but excludes carbonate rocks which were covered in AAPG Memoir 77 (Scholle and Ulmer-Scholle, 2003). Sandstone petrography, and sedimentary petrography in general, is considered by many to be a science in decline. As a consequence, it is being taught at fewer universities, or at least commonly is subsumed into broader
petrology or sedimentology classes, where it receivesless time and less focus.
In reality, however, the petrography of clastic terrigenous rocks remains a vital area of study, contributing to both academic and applied economic discoveries. It is a science in transition, however. In the mid-20th century, the research focus was largely on the use of textural
properties to define mechanisms of transport, environments of deposition and the use of grain identification and rock classification to shed light on source terranes, paleoclimates and paleotectonic settings.
Since that time, the research forefront has shifted to studies of diagenesis in sandstones and to an increased understand ing of the finer-grained terrigenous rocks—siltstones, mudstones and shales (see, for example, the insightful historical review by Steel and Milliken, 2013). That
transition has been driven largely by the fact that hydrocarbon exploration has shifted to deeper targets, more stratigraphic traps and unconventional, finer-grained reservoir rocks.
The shift in focus for petrography has led to amazing discoveries regarding the character and extent of diagenetic processes as well as to the development of predictive models of subsurface alteration and porosity retention, loss or creation. At the same time, the increased
recognition of the significance of subsurface alteration has forced a reevaluation of long-established principles of sandstone provenance based on petrographically-determined sediment composition.