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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

Kansas Geological Society

Abstract


Transactions of the 1999 AAPG Midcontinent Section Meeting (Geoscience for the 21st Century), 1999
Pages 201-210

Origin of Missourian and Virgilian Stratigraphic Sequences—Southern Midcontinent

Glenn S. Visher

Abstract

A revolution is underway in understanding the causality of depositional patterns and sequences. The areal distribution of accommodation space is a primary control interrelating the depositional setting, the deposition theme, and the genetic sequence. Accommodation space is related to changes in sea level, rates of sediment supply, and patterns of subsidence. These attributes can be interrelated in space and time on scales of a few hundred km2, and time periods of thousands of years.

Depocenters are related to patterns of lithospheric stress distribution associated with wrench faulting related to interregional northwest-southeast lineaments. Gravity maps provide data on major areal and vertical variations in lithospheric thickness, density, and thermal conductivity.

Determining the origin of stratigraphic patterns requires the development of a time-rock correlation framework at a scale sufficient to determine the geometry of stratigraphic sequences. Depositional patterns may reflect vertical stacking, progradation, or onlapping and backstepping stratal packages. These patterns are related complexly to rates of change in accommodation space, rates of sediment supply, and sedimentary dispersive forces. The correlation and mapping of the geometry and pattern of terminations of bedding planes and disconformities is required in order to determine the depositional history.

The depositional history of Missourian and Virgilian (Pennsylvanian) strata in Oklahoma and Kansas reflect changes in the patterns of basinal subsidence, progradation, and onlap. These are associated with wrench faulting, the history of sea-level changes, and patterns of basinal subsidence. These can be related causally to the subsidence of deltaic depocenters, the development of carbonate banks, and onlapping black shales associated with maximum flooding surfaces.


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