Abstract Carbonate petrography — the study of limestones, dolomites and associated deposits under optical or electron microscopes —greatly enhances field studies or core observations and can provide a frame of reference for geochemical studies. Petrography is an especially powerful tool because it enables the identification of constituent grains, the detailed classification of sediments and rocks, the interpretation of environments of deposition, and the determination of the often complex history of post-depositional alteration (diagenesis). The last of these, the ability to determine the timing of diagenetic events such as cementation or secondary porosity development relative to the emplacement of hydrocarbons or metallic ores, makes petrography an important component of geochemical and sedimentologic studies in energy- and mineral-resource exploration applications as well as in academic research. The petrographic study of carbonate rocks is particularly useful because carbonate grains, unlike clastic terrigenous ones, normally are produced in close proximity (from less than a meter to hundreds of meters) to the site of their ultimate deposition. In addition, carbonate grains are formed mainly by organisms, and thus the grains convey ecological information about the environment of formation as well as stratigraphical information on the age of the deposit. In some ways, carbonate petrography is not a very complex undertaking, especially when compared to the petrography of clastic terrigenous deposits. Most carbonate rocks are dominated by just one or two common carbonate minerals (mainly calcite and dolomite) plus a limited number of accompanying minerals — silica, detrital grains, phosphate, glauconite, and a few evaporite precipitates. The diagram below shows the general compositions of the full spectrum of carbonate minerals found in modern and ancient strata.

Abstract This volume expands and improves the AAPG 1978 classic, A Color Illustrated Guide to Carbonate Rock Constituents, Textures, Cements, and Porosities(AAPG Memoir 27). Carbonate petrography can be quite complicated. Changing assemblages of organisms through time, coupled with the randomness of thin-section cuts through complex shell forms, add to the difficulty of identifying skeletal grains. Furthermore, because many primary carbonate grains are composed of unstable minerals (especially aragonite and high-Mg calcite), diagenetic alteration commonly is quite extensive in carbonate rocks. The variability of inorganic and biogenic carbonate mineralogy through time, however, complicates prediction of patterns of diagenetic alteration. This book is designed to help deal with such challenges. It includes a wide variety of examples of commonly encountered skeletal and nonskeletal grains, cements, fabrics, and porosity types. It includes extensive new tables of age distributions, mineralogy, morphologic characteristics, environmental implications and keys to grain identification. It also encompasses a number of noncarbonate grains, that occur as accessory minerals in carbonate rocks or that may provide important biostratigraphic or paleoenvironmental information in carbonate strata. With this guide, students and other workers with little formal petrographic training should be able to examine thin sections or acetate peels under the microscope and interpret the main rock constituents and their depositional and diagenetic history.

Abstract Information from modern shallow-water carbonate depositional settings is commonly incorporated into the analysis of reservoir-scale heterogeneity problems and exploration-scale plays. The modern analogs provide a means to illustrate the distribution of porous carbonate facies within the overall setting. Often these analogs become an important part of the geologic model because they show the scale, trend, and interrelationships of facies that might be related to reservoir and nonreservoir distribution. Over the last few years, we have repeatedly been approached by Chevron's geologists to help supply analog examples for their work. We have been able to direct them to the appropriate literature, and in a few cases, have supplied a photograph or drawing for their use. In most cases, however, we were unable to readily provide to them good illustrative material for these examples. As a result of this frustrating situation, we initiated a project to acquire and process Landsat and SPOT satellite images from select key modern carbonate areas that should help fulfill the needs of most exploration and development geologists for analogs. These images from several "classic" areas, including southern Florida, the Bahamas, the Caicos Platform in the British West Indies, Yucatan and Chinchorro Bank in Mexico, Belize, Great Barrier Reef and Shark Bay in Australia, and the coastline of Abu Dhabi (Figures 1A-1C), form the basis of this book.In addition to their use as analogs, the satellite images can be important teaching materials for carbonate training courses. Many of the same modern areas are used as case studies to