W. Schlager, Vrije Universiteit/Earth and Life Sciences
De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2002. p. 146.
ISBN 90-806364-2-8This booklet supports a short course in carbonate sedimentology. It is meant as a teaching aid, not a replacement of the course. Anybody using it for self-study should be prepared to occasionally consult an introductory textbook, such as Füchtbauer & Richter (1988), Jones & Desrochers (1992), Tucker & Wright (1990), or Wright & Burchette (1996).
The course is meant as an introduction to the study of carbonate rocks on the scale of outcrops to the scale of sedimentary basins. The large-scale anatomy of the rocks and the broad facies patterns are the leitmotif. The anatomy-approach is a logical first step if one is headed for the seismic interpretation of carbonate rocks. In fact, much of what has been selected for the course could also be included in a course on seismic sedimentology. However, it seems to me that the large-scale anatomy is also the favorite perspective of most field geologists in mountain belts. For them, outcrops replace seismic lines and palinspastic reconstructions rather than reservoir predictions may be the key task but their approach is in many ways akin to that of the basin analyst.ContentsIntroduction
Principles of carbonate sedimentology
Production, erosion
Growth potential and drowning
Geometry of shoalwater carbonate accumulations
Facies patterns
Principal controls
Facies patterns – from ramp to rimmed platform
Standard facies belts
Environmental messages from organisms
Rhythms and events in carbonate deposition
Autocycles
Milankovitch cycles
Organic evolution
Chemical evolution
Fundamentals of sequence stratigraphy
Important principles and definitions of sequence stratigraphy
Accommodation and sediment supply - a dual control of stratigraphic sequences
Carbonate sequence stratigraphy
Carbonate factories and the principle of depositional bias
Tropical carbonate sequence architecture and its control
Facies characteristics of carbonate systems tracts
Types of sequence boundaries
The sequence stratigraphy of gradual change
Sea-level movements deduced from seismic images
Highstand shedding
Periplatform domain in sequence stratigraphy
Ecologic reef, geologic reef, seismic reef
Sequence stratigraphy of the cool-water and mud-mound factories
Messages
References
