Global sea-level rise increased during the twentieth century from 1.5 to 3.0 mm/yr and is expected to at least double over the next few decades. The Western Louisiana and Texas coast is especially vulnerable to sea-level rise due to low gradients, high subsidence, and depleted sediment supply. This Memoir describes the regional response of coastal environments to variable rates of sea-level rise and sediment supply during Holocene to modern time. It is based on results from more than six decades of research focused on coastal and nearshore stratigraphic records. The results are a wake-up call for those who underestimate the potential magnitude of coastal change over decadal to centennial time scales, with dramatic changes caused by accelerated sea-level rise and diminished sediment supply.

ABSTRACT The Colorado River extensional corridor, which stretched by a factor of 2 in the Miocene, left a series of lowland basins and intervening bedrock ranges that, at the dawn of the Pliocene, were flooded by Colorado River water newly diverted from the Colorado Plateau through Grand Canyon. This water and subsequent sediment gave birth, through a series of overflowing lakes, to an integrated Colorado River flowing to the newly opened Gulf of California. Topock Gorge, which the river now follows between the Chemehuevi and Mohave Mountains, is a major focus of this field guide, as it very nicely exposes structural, stratigraphic, and magmatic aspects of the Miocene extensional corridor, a core complex, and detachment faults as well as a pre-Cenozoic batholith. Topock Gorge also is the inferred site of a paleodivide between early Pliocene basins of newly arrived Colorado River water. Overspilling of its upstream lake breached the divide and led the river southward. The Bouse Formation in this and other basins records the pre–river integration water bodies. Younger riverlaid deposits including the Bullhead Alluvium (Pliocene) and the Chemehuevi Formation (Pleistocene) record subsequent evolution of the Colorado River through a succession of aggradational and re-incision stages. Their stratigraphic record provides evidence of local basin deepening after river inception, but little deformation on a regional scale of the river valley in the last 4 m.y. except in the Lake Mead area. There, faults interrupt both the paleoriver grade and incision rates, and are interpreted to record 100’s of m of true uplift of the Colorado Plateau. Warren Hamilton’s insightful work beginning in the 1950s helped set the stage for interpretation of Mesozoic orogeny and Cenozoic extension in this region, as well as the record of the Bouse Formation.

ABSTRACT The upper Middle Eocene to Lower Miocene Sespe Formation is the youngest part of an ~7-km-thick Cretaceous–Paleogene forearc stratigraphic sequence in coastal southern California. Whereas Upper Cretaceous through Middle Eocene strata of southern California record a transition from local (i.e., continental-margin batholith) to extraregional (i.e., cratonal) provenance resulting from Laramide deformation (75–35 Ma), the Sespe Formation records the reversal of this process and the re-establishment of local sediment sources by Middle Miocene time. In contrast to underlying dominantly marine strata, the Sespe Formation primarily consists of alluvial/fluvial and deltaic sandstone and conglomerate, which represent terminal filling of the forearc basin. Prior to Middle Miocene dissection and clockwise rotation, the Sespe basin trended north-south adjacent to the west side of the Peninsular Ranges. The integration of paleocurrent, accessory-mineral, conglomerate, sandstone, and detrital zircon data tightly constrains provenance. Sespe sandstone deposited in the Late Eocene was supplied by two major rivers (one eroding the Sonoran Desert, to the east, and one eroding the Mojave Desert, Colorado River trough area, and Transition Zone, to the north), as well as smaller local drainages. As the Farallon slab rolled back toward the coast during the Oligocene, the drainage divide also migrated southwestward. During deposition of the upper Sespe Formation, extraregional sources diminished, while the Peninsular Ranges provided increasing detritus from the east and the Franciscan Complex provided increasing detritus from the west (prerotation). As the overall flux of detritus to the Sespe basin decreased and deposition slowed, nonmarine environments were replaced by marine environments, in which the Miocene Vaqueros Formation was deposited. The provenance and paleogeographic information presented herein provides new insights regarding the unique paleotectonic setting of the Sespe forearc from the Late Eocene through earliest Miocene. Nonmarine sedimentation of the Sespe Formation initiated soon after cessation of coastal flat-slab subduction of the Laramide orogeny and terminated as the drainage divide migrated coastward. Competing models for movement along the Nacimiento fault system during the Laramide orogeny (sinistral slip versus reverse slip to emplace the Salinian terrane against the Nacimiento terrane) share the fact that the Peninsular Ranges forearc basin was not disrupted, as it lay south and southwest of the Nacimiento fault system. The northern edge of the Peninsular Ranges batholith formed a natural conduit for the fluvial system that deposited the Sespe Formation.

Abstract: A reactive transport model (RTM) is used to simulate the diagenetic evolution of a siliciclastic reservoir with a known burial and thermal history. The diagenetic phenomena occurring in two temperature regimes are simulated: kaolinite/chlorite formation at low/medium temperatures by means of isothermal zero-dimensional (0D) flush models, and smectite illitization and quartz precipitation at high temperatures by means of 0D and 1D non-isothermal models. Zero-dimensional models show that at 30°C kaolinite forms only in freshwater from K-feldspar and quartz. In river or seawater, muscovite is stable instead of kaolinite. Calcite formation depends on pH and total inorganic carbon. At 50°C, seawater promotes Mg-chlorite formation from mica alterations. At 70–110°C, evaporated seawater favours smectite–illite transformation and quartz precipitation. The non-isothermal 1D models are used to simulate the diagenesis of a compacting clay expelling fluid into an underlying sandstone. An sensitivity analysis of the clays’ thermodynamic and kinetic parameters is carried out to assess the possibility of modelling the transformation of smectite into illite in the clay, with the concomitant formation of a quartz cement in the adjacent sandstone. The results of the numerical simulations point out that the extent of the smectite–illite conversion and quartz precipitation is dependent primarily on the availability of potassium: temperature, however, does not seem to play a major role.