Carbonate Sedimentology and Sequence Stratigraphy is available to be downloaded here now.
- Title: Carbonate Sedimentology and Sequence Stratigraphy
- Author: Wolfgang Schlage
- Publisher: SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology)
- Pages: 209
Sedimentology and stratigraphy are neighbors yet distinctly separate entities within the earth sciences. Put in a nutshell, sedimentology searches for the common traits of sedimentary rocks regardless of age as it reconstructs environments and processes of deposition and erosion from the sediment record. Stratigraphy, by contrast, concentrates on changes with time, on measuring time and correlating
coeval events.
Sequence stratigraphy straddles the bound ary between the two fields. It is a sedimentologic concept as it uses depositional anatomy to reconstruct environments and lateral facies change, and it is part of stratigraphy as it studies the vertical succession of sedimentary rocks and their succession and correlation.
This expose, dedicated to carbonate rocks, approaches sequence stratigraphy from its sedimentologic background. Carbonate sedimentation, in contrast to siliciclastic sedimentation, is largely governed by chemistry and biota of the ocean and thus intimately tied to the ocean environment. Therefore, the presentation starts with essentials of physical and chemical oceanography and biology. It then proceeds to principles of marine carbonateproduction (anderosion) and the geometry of carbonate accumulations, using the concept of carbonate production systems, or factories, to illustrate the variations among carbonate rocks.
Armed with the knowledge on production and accumulation, the text turns to carbonate facies; the sedimentologic part closes with an overview of the rhythms and events governing carbonate deposition in time and space. Chapters 6 through 8 deal with sequence stratigraphy. This part starts with an overview of the standard model of sequence stratigraphy and then develops carbonate sequence stratigraphy on the basis of processes and principles presented in the sedimentologic part and using the three major carbonate factories as a template for discussion.