Atlas of Deep-Water Outcrops
Tor H. Nilsen, a red-haired Scandinavian who stood more than six feet tall, died October 9, 2005, at his San Carlos, California, home. This was after a valiant five-year fight with melanoma cancer. He was 63. His ashes were scattered at his family plot in Norway in 2006.
He was born in New York City on November 29, 1941, to Mollie Abrahamson and Nils Marius Nilsen of Mandal, Norway, and was the first of their children to be born in the United States. After graduating from Brooklyn Tech, he earned his B.S. in geology from City College of New York in 1962. While there, his prowess on the basketball court impressed a scout from the New York Knicks, but Tor went on to graduate school and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1964 and 1967, respectively. His M.S. thesis was a study of Precambrian metasedimentary deposits in the Lake Superior area, and his Ph.D. thesis was a study of Devonian alluvial-fan deposits of the Old Red Sandstone in western Norway.
Dr. Nilsen’s principal expertise was in depositional systems analysis, stratigraphic analysis, and the relationships among tectonics, eustasy, and sedimentation. He began his industry career in 1967 as a research geologist with the Shell Development Company in Houston, Texas, and Ventura, California, where he worked on the tectonics and sedimentation of Tertiary shelf systems of coastal California. He subsequently spent two years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the Military
Stratigraphic and Depositional Architecture of a Slope Channel System: Isaac Channel 5, Castle Creek South, Isaac Formation, Windermere Supergroup, British Columbia, Canada
-
Published:January 01, 2008
-
CiteCitation
Ernesto Schwarz, R. W. C. Arnott, 2008. "Stratigraphic and Depositional Architecture of a Slope Channel System: Isaac Channel 5, Castle Creek South, Isaac Formation, Windermere Supergroup, British Columbia, Canada", Atlas of Deep-Water Outcrops, Tor H. Nilsen, Roger D. Shew, Gary S. Steffens, Joseph R. J. Studlick
Download citation file:
- Share
Abstract
A detailed architectural analysis was conducted on Isaac channel 5 in the Castle Creek area (east-central British Columbia, Canada, 1). Isaac channel 5 developed within a Neoproterozoic slope turbidite system along the passive western margin of North America where debris flows and mass movements were common (see Arnott and Ross, chapter 22, this volume).
Isaac channel 5 crops out across a 3.5-km (2.1-mi)-long section oriented oblique to mean paleoflow (toward the northwest) and represents an enduring transport and depositional pathway that accumulated ~100 m (~330 ft) of mostly sand sediment (Figures 2, 3). It consists of three stacked, high net-to-gross channel-complex fills (each 8–30 m [25–100 ft] thick) that correspond to shorter term flow conduits (C1, C2, and C3; Figures 2, 3). channel complexes are multistory units that consist mainly of thick-bedded, Bouma Ta and Tab divisions, mudstone-clast breccia, and medium-bedded, dune cross-stratified sandstone. Granule conglomerate to medium-grained sandstone is the most common grain-size range. Five different channel-fill elements were identified within the channel complexes. Each consists of a different assemblage of facies, stratal patterns, and/or lateral dimensions, and unique reservoir characteristics (12). The development of channel-fill elements is linked to specific combinations of flow and sediment flux conditions that controlled aggradation and erosion within channels.
channel complexes are capped by siltstone-rich, thin-bedded units (T3 and T4; Figures 2, 3) that represent intervening episodes of overbank and levee sedimentation (local channel-complex deactivation). Additionally, debrite deposits (D1 and D2), which occur typically at the base of channels and channel complexes, are the result of