Special Paper 155 includes the published papers presented at the symposium on “Trace Element Geochemistry in Health and Disease” held at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 15, 1972, under the sponsorship of the Joint Technical Paper Committee of the Geological Society of America and the National Association of Geology Teachers. The first symposium on “Environmental Geochemistry in Relation to Human Health and Disease” was held in 1968 in Dallas, Texas, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is published in Memoir 123 (1971) of the Geological Society of America. One paper presented at the symposium in Minneapolis, “The Chemical Behavior of Major and Minor Elements in Aquatic Environments at the Earth’s Surface” by R. C. Reynolds, is not included in Special Paper 155; an additional paper, “Some Possible Relationships of Water and Soil Chemistry to Cardiovascular Diseases in Indiana” by R. W. Klusman and H. I. Sauer, is included. Among others, the following symposia and conferences on trace elements and health have contributed additional data: Trace Substances in Environmental Health, I–VIII, D. D. Hemphill, editor, 1968 to 1975, proceedings of the annual conferences of the University of Missouri; Trace Element Metabolism in Animals (TEMA)—I, edited by C. F. Mills and published by E. and S. Livingstone, Edinburgh and London, 1970; TEMA—II, edited by W. G. Hoekstra and others, held in Madison, Wisconsin, and sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Madison and the United . . .

Abstract This field trip of the Society of Economic Geologists, held in conjunction with the 1990 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Dallas, Texas, provides the opportunity to examine the geologic setting and mineral resources of the Delaware Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The Delaware Basin is best known for its petroleum production, particularly from Permian reservoirs, but also hosts some of North America's major industrial mineral resources. The Trans-Pecos area of west Texas and contiguous southeastern New Mexico has had significant and varied non-fuels mineral resource production. Historic minerals production in the region is dominated by silver and lead from the Shafter district, silver and copper from the Van Hom district, mercury from the Terlingua district, sulfur from Culberson and Pecos Counties, talc from the Allamoore district, potash from the Carlsbad district, and fluorspar from the Christmas and Eagle Mountains. Some of these deposits are genetically related to Tertiary magmatic activity in the southern Trans-Pecos region to the south of the area traversed on this field trip. Other districts and commodities have potential for future development. Recent exploration has defined additional silver-lead-zinc reserves in the Shafter district and major beryllium resources in the Sierra Blanca district. The first day of the field trip traverses the region from El Paso, Texas, to Carlsbad, New Mexico. This traverse spans the transition from Basin and Range topographic and structural regime to the Great Plains. The first part of the trip travels over uplifted ranges dominantly of Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary strata separated by gravel-filled bolsons with local playas. Enroute to Carlsbad the route skirts the northwestern margin of the Delaware Basin, including the spectacularly exposed Permian reefal carbonate strata in the canyons of the Guadalupe Mountains. These strata host the world-renowned Carlsbad Caverns, as well as other recently discovered and undeveloped major cave systems. An early afternoon tour of the operations of the International Minerals and Chemical Corp. No. 5 shaft provides the opportunity to examine late Permian (Ochoan) evaporite strata of the Carlsbad district, the source of the largest domestic potash production and reserves. A late afternoon visit to Carlsbad Caverns offers a view of a major karst system developed in Permian shelf margin carbonates. In addition to the opportunity to visit a popular tourist attraction, this stop is significant in that the hydrologic and geochemical system that created the Delaware Basin margin karst systems

Abstract The papers contained on this CD mostly originate from a session at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, repeated at the 2004 Dallas AAPG Meeting. The theme of both sessions was “Facies Models Revisited”, to see what sort of progress had been made since the third (1992) edition of Facies Models, published by the Geological Society of Canada. During the ten years between 1992 and 2002, there has been considerable progress in the understanding of modern and ancient depositional environments. This additional complexity makes modeling much more difficult, and raises the problem of whether modeling still serves a purpose. The original reasons for creating facies models still exist—a model is a point of comparison, it is a guide for further observations, it serves as a basis for hydrodynamic interpretation, and most importantly, it acts as a predictor in new situations. Using submarine fans as an example, it is clear that progress during the last ten years (particularly in 3-D seismic) has highlighted the inadequacy of all pre-existing models—indeed, no comprehensive models have been proposed since the mid eighties. Yet with continued and increasing exploration in submarine fan systems, predictive models are even more necessary. The traditional approach, of distilling the features that modern and ancient systems have in common, is extremely difficult (and probably naive) in such diverse and complex systems. Instead, it is necessary to identify all of the constituent building blocks of submarine fans (channels, point bars, levees, splays, frontal lobes and so on), and try to identify the salient features of each. New models for particular situations can be constructed by examining the relationships of the constituent building blocks. For example, sinuous channels, levees and splays may be closely related in space, whereas frontal lobes are unlikely to be related to sinuous leveed channels (except for the channel that ultimately feeds the lobe). A three-dimensional reconstruction can therefore be made by examining the building blocks that are closely and commonly related, and also using information from the building blocks that are seldom or never found in juxtaposition. These principles, discussed above for submarine fans, can be applied to all depositional environments, at all scales. The ideas are elaborated in this introductory paper, and can be seen in the other contributions to this CD.