Abstract This chapter describes and presents a newly compiled map illustrating the paleogeography of Laurentia during the earliest Ordovician, a time when the great American carbonate bank was at one of its greatest extents and a period for which the most is understood. The map depicts the known or postulated extent of the inner detrital belt, the great American carbonate bank and the more problematic (commonly structurally relocated) outer detrital belt. The period on which the map is based and discussed in the accompanying text is based on the Early Ordovician (early Ibexian) (early Tremadocian) Stonehenge transgression.

Abstract The Sauk megasequence in the far inboard region of the cratonic interior of North America (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa) is divisible into two packages that fundamentally differ from one another in facies and stratigraphic attributes. A lower Sauk succession package, Marjuman–early Skullrockian in age, is characterized by deposits of the traditional inner detrital belt (IDB) that interfinger hundreds of kilometers seaward with the middle carbonate belt or cratonward margin of the central mid-continent great American carbonate bank (GACB). The IDB contains a typical suite of nearshore siliciclastic facies containing features that document the importance of both wave- and tide-dominated currents in the depositional system. The transitional area between the IDB and the GACB in the Cambrian and earliest Ordovician was a moat, characterized by relatively deep-water deposition, which served as a catchment for mud that was winnowed from landward parts of the shelf and then deposited near the stormwave base. Mixed carbonate and siliciclastic facies in the moat are characterized by condensation features and other attributes indicative of suppressed carbonate productivity and starvation of siliciclastic sand. These facies contrast with shallower water facies that commonly filled available accommodation space in both seaward (central part of the GACB) and landward (cratonic shoreline) directions, the former dominated by typical stacks of oolitic, ribbon-rock, and microbialite lithofacies, and the latter by stacks of nearshore siliciclastic sand-dominated parasequences. Our chronostratigraphic framework provides temporal constraints that support the long-postulated hypothesis that these two depositional systems expanded and contracted in reciprocating fashion: substantial landward migration and expansion of the GACB occurred when siliciclastic input was diminished during the most rapid rates of transgression (marked by maximum flooding intervals in the IDB). Retreat and diminishment in the extent of the GACB corresponded to falls in sea level that led to major progradations of nearshore siliciclastics of the IDB and terrigenous poisoning of the carbonate factory. An overlying upper Sauk succession package records the establishment of a fundamentally different depositional system in the far inboard regions of the cratonic interior beginning in the later Skullrockian. The Prairie du Chien Group and its equivalents represent a major landward migration and perhaps cratonwide distribution of the oolitic, ribbon-rock, and micro-bialite lithofacies that were previously restricted mostly to the GACB of Missouri and adjacent areas. This change was triggered by a pronounced continental-scale flooding event that led to onlap across much, or all, of the cratonic interior. The resultant burial of terrigenous source regions by carbonate strata is in part responsible for this fundamental change in de-positional conditions.

ABSTRACT This one-day trip provides an overview of the hydrostratigraphic attributes of the Platteville aquitard in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. As a shallowly buried, extensively fractured carbonate rock in an urban setting, vulnerable to contaminants, the Platteville has been the subject of a wide variety of geomechanical and hydrogeologic studies over the past few decades. This work, combined with our own borehole geophysics and outcrop observations, has led to a more comprehensive understanding of the Platteville. The field trip will provide examples of what we have learned from these many different data sources, which collectively lead to a characterization of the Platteville as a complex “hybrid” hydrogeologic unit. Under certain conditions, and from one perspective, it can serve as an important aquitard that limits vertical flow, whereas in other conditions, and from another perspective, it is best considered a karstic aquifer with bedding-plane parallel conduits of very high hydraulic conductivity that permit rapid flow of large volumes of water. One particular focus of the trip will be demonstration of what appears to be predictability in both vertical and bedding-plane fracture patterns that in turn provides some degree of predictability of flow paths in three dimensions. These relationships appear to be operative for the Platteville in other parts of the Upper Midwest where the Platteville is shallowly buried. We will demonstrate that effective management of such complex, karst, “hybrid,” hydrogeologic units requires a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of their heterogeneous behavior.