About This Item

Share This Item

The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Special Volumes

Abstract

J. C. Pashin and R. A. Gastaldo , eds., 2004 , Sequence stratigraphy, paleoclimate, and tectonics of coal-bearing strata : AAPG Studies in Geology 51 , p. 199 - 217 .

Copyright copy2004. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.

Cyclothems of the Black Warrior Basin, Alabama, U.S.A.: Eustatic Snapshots of Foreland Basin Tectonism

Jack C. Pashin

Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of this research were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (contract DOE/BC/14448) and the U.S. Geological Survey (National Coal Resources Data System) under various cooperative agreements. Richard Carroll calculated well locations from line calls, and Diane Norris provided graphical assistance. Rupert Bodden contributed samples of coal from above the Brookwood coal zone for palynological analysis. Phillip H. Heckel and Timothy M. Demko provided insightful reviews that substantially improved the content of this paper.

ABSTRACT

Flooding-surface-bounded depositional cycles were used to make three-dimensional models of total effective subsidence in the lower Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation of the eastern Black Warrior Basin and demonstrate the utility of Pennsylvanian cyclothems for assessing controls on the development of accommodation space. The Black Warrior foreland basin underwent tectonic loading during Pottsville deposition, and the regional subsidence pattern reflects superposition of an Appalachian depocenter on an older Ouachita flexural moat. Modeling cycle duration within the constraints of biostratigraphy and foreland-basin geodynamics indicates a transition from dominant third-order cyclicity to dominant fourth- and fifth-order cyclicity that may be equivalent to the 0.4- and 0.1-m.y. Milankovitch orbital eccentricity periods. Changes in subsidence pattern from cycle to cycle are most pronounced in the distal part of the basin and reflect significant spatial and secular excursions of subsidence rate. These excursions indicate that high-frequency tectonic activity that generally has not been considered in stratigraphic and geophysical models of foreland basins can be detected by backstripping and mapping Pennsylvanian cyclothems.

Pay-Per-View Purchase Options

The article is available through a document delivery service. Explain these Purchase Options.

Watermarked PDF Document: $14
Open PDF Document: $24