Sandstone Depositional Environments
Sandstone Depositional Environments has proven to be one of AAPG's all-time best sellers, with multiple reprints and extensive use as a university textbook. The volume is specifically designed for the non-sedimentologist, the petroleum geologist, or the field geologist who needs to use sandstone depositional environments in facies reconstruction and environmental interpretations. Prediction of subsurface sandstone trends, diagenetic style, and continuity of reservoir porosity is strongly dependent on an understanding of original depositional environments. The volume consists of twelve chapters, each covering a major environmental setting for sandstone deposition from terrestrial to deep marine (glacial, eolian, alluvial fan, lacustrine, fluvial, deltaic, estuarine, tidal flat, barrier island, continental shelf, continental slope, and submarine fan). For each environment the modern depositional processes are described and compared to subsurface examples, with abundant illustrations and photographs. Different scales and perspectives are reviewed, using aerial photos, maps, seismic, cross sections, outcrops, cores, and thin sections. Each chapter is organized in a manner that it can be used effectively and independently for teaching purposes or as an analog reference for field study and subsurface interpretation.
Barrier-Island and Strand-Plain Facies
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Published:January 01, 1982
Abstract
Barriers and strand plains are prominent depositional features of many modern coasts, and sandstone bodies of similar origin are represented in the stratigraphic record. In contrast to river deltas, which result from interaction of fluvial and marine processes, barriers and strand plains are supplied and molded almost entirely by marine processes. For purposes of this discussion, barriers are defined as sandy islands or peninsulas elongate parallel with shore and separated from the mainland by lagoons or marshes. Barriers are transitional in character to strand plains, which are wider in a land-sea direction and generally lack well developed lagoons and inlets. Chenier plains are a type of strand plain consisting of coastwise sandy ridges, separated by coastal mudflat deposits.
Some of the major environments and facies associated with barriers and strand plains are shown in Figure 1. The environments of sand deposition include: (1) beach and shoreface environments on the seaward side of barriers and strand plains; (2) inlet channels and tidal deltas, separating barriers laterally; and (3) washover fans on the landward or lagoonward side of barriers. Seaward or longshore migration of these environments results in facies sequences constituting much of the volume of many coastal sand bodies. For example, the emergent parts of many barriers and strand plains are underlain by progradational beach and shoreface sequences. Barrier sand bodies may also include sequences formed by coastwise or seaward migration of tidal inlets and tidal deltas.