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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
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Brief periods of erosion without concurrent structural deformation have produced low-angle regional unconformities. These unconformities may provide the environment for stratigraphic traps where hydrocarbons accumulate within the truncated beds. However, the slight amount of erosional stripping (a few feet per mile) and the absence of significant changes in the lithology make the detection of these low-angle regional unconformities difficult. The chances of recognizing and delineating them seem to depend, at least in part, on the selection of a datum.
Low-angle regional unconformities are common in the Western Canada basin. Only three were selected as examples, because they occur in a sequence generally considered to be one continuous depositional unit: (1) beneath the Mississippian Debolt, (2) beneath the Devonian Calmar, and (3) beneath the Devonian Ireton Formations.
Slight variations in local rates of subsidence effect continuous changes in the direction of the depositional dip. These changes from formation to formation generally are minor. When sedimentation resumes after an hiatus, its new depositional dip represents the cumulative shift in regional tilt gradually introduced during the absence of deposition. The new dip direction in many cases relocated individual members of a sedimentary cycle, more especially the occurrence of sand lenses in a clastic province or of reef build-ups in a carbonate-shale sequence.
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