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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
Abstract
AAPG Bulletin, V.
2004. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
An ancient river channel system incised on the Precambrian–Cambrian unconformity beneath Jackson County, Ohio
Justin Reuter,1 Doyle R. Watts2
1Department of Geological Sciences, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio 45435; present address: Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, P.O. Box 1330, Houston, Texas 77251-1330; [email protected]
2Department of Geological Sciences, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio 45435; [email protected]
AUTHORS
Justin Reuter is a geophysicist at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. He received a B.S. degree in geology from Central Michigan University and an M.S. degree in geophysics from Wright State University. He is actively working on the Gulf of Mexico shelf. His interests are seismic data processing and interpretation.
Doyle R. Watts is an assistant professor of geophysics at Wright State University. He received a B.S. degree in physics from Ohio State University in 1972, an M.S. degree in geology from Ohio State University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Michigan in 1979. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leeds and lecturer in geophysics at Glasgow University. He has carried out geophysical investigations in Antarctica, North America, Scotland, England, and Tibet. His interests are seismic data processing and interpretation and remote sensing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank William Bolla of Burlington Resources Incorporated for releasing the 3-D seismic data of Jackson County, Ohio, to Wright State University. Tom Fago of Burlington Resources Incorporated provided geophysical well logs, and William McIntire assisted in the preparation of the figures. We thank Mark Baranoski and Ron Riley of the Ohio Geological Survey for stimulating discussions on this work and their assistance in the identification of various reflectors. We appreciate helpful remarks from David Harris of the Kentucky Geological Survey on the geology of the Rome trough. Paradigm Geophysical donated the software, that we used to analyze these data to Wright State University.
ABSTRACT
We analyzed a migrated three-dimensional (3-D) seismic reflection data set collected from Jackson County, Ohio, using volume-based voxel visualization technology. Adjusting the opacities of voxels in a time slab centered on the Precambrian reflector revealed a drainage channel system incised on the Ohio Precambrian surface, approximately 1460 m (4800 ft) below sea level. Formation sculpting of the Precambrian surface produced an image of 100-m (330-ft)-wide tributaries on the Precambrian unconformity joining to produce a 400-m (1320-ft)-wide channel roughly parallel to the subsurface trend of the Grenville front beneath Ohio. Broadening and splitting of the zero-phase seismic wavelet that defines the Precambrian reflector reveals the channels. The seismic signature is caused by thin-bed interference effects caused by reflections at the boundary between the channel fill with the overlying Mount Simon Formation and the boundary with the underlying Precambrian surface. The seismic images, therefore, locate a new lithologic unit in the Ohio subsurface. The channels are older than the overlying Mount Simon Formation and so must be at of least Middle Cambrian age. The channel morphology indicates flow in the direction of the Rome trough, approximately 60 km (37 mi) to the south, likely transporting sediment to that basin. Given the tiny volume of Ohio sampled by 3-D seismic methods, such buried channels must be common on the Precambrian surface.
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