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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 64 (1980)

Issue: 9. (September)

First Page: 1555

Last Page: 1555

Title: Chester and Pottsville Depositional Systems, Outcrop and Subsurface, in Black Warrior Basin, Mississippi and Alabama: ABSTRACT

Author(s): A. W. Cleaves, M. C. Broussard

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

Terrigenous clastic depositional systems of the Upper Mississippian Chester Group and the overlying Lower Pennsylvanian Pottsville Group in the Black Warrior basin of Alabama and Mississippi were deposited in distinctly different tectonic settings. The predominantly deltaic Chester sandstone units accumulated on the stable northern shelf of the basin and had a cratonic source to the north or northwest. Detailed subsurface mapping of these cratonic delta systems indicates that the northern shelf can be subdivided into a terrigenous clastic western element (Parkwood and Floyd Formations) and a largely carbonate eastern element (Bangor, Hartselle, Monteagle, and Pride Mountain Formations). Total thickness of the Chester interval on the shelf averages 1,200 ft (366 m). Pottsv lle sediments, in contrast, had a principal source to the southwest of the Black Warrior basin. They represent the thick clastic wedge shed from the Ouachita orogenic belt. Pottsville deposition occurred in a rapidly subsiding foreland basin and involved a maximum sediment accumulation exceeding 12,000 ft (3,658 m) in the basinal core.

Within the Chester Group four cycles of deltaic progradation have been identified through data gathered from 600 well logs. Two deltaic depocenters, a carbonate shelf and ramp, and a shallow basin carbonaceous shale unit comprise the principal depositional systems along the northern margin of the basin.

With the surface and shallow subsurface Pottsville of the Black Warrior basin in Alabama, the 2,000-ft (610 m) stratigraphic interval can be subdivided into a minimum of seven vertical genetic components. In contrast with the Chester units, however, laterally extensive coal seams rather than marine transgressive limestone tongues form the bounding elements. On the surface, the lowest Pottsville unit has no productive coal seams and is dominated by massive, quartzarenite sandstone bodies interbedded with dark gray shale.

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