Carbonate Sequence Stratigraphy

Sedimentology and stratigraphy are neighbors yet distinctly separate entities within the earth sciences. Sedimentology searches for the common traits of sedimentary rocks regardless of age as it reconstructs environments and processes of deposition and erosion from the sediment record. Stratigraphy, by contrast, concentrates on changes with time, on measuring time and correlating coeval events. Sequence stratigraphy straddles the boundary between the two fields. This book, dedicated to carbonate rocks, approaches sequence stratigraphy from its sedimentologic background. This book attempts to communicate by combining different specialities and different lines of reasoning, and by searching for principles underlying the bewildering diversity of carbonate rocks. It provides enough general background, in introductory chapters and appendices, to be easily digestible for sedimentologists and stratigraphers as well as earth scientists at large.

Hardcover plus Foldouts

Reservoir management is an important topic in the oil industry today. Conferences, forums, short courses, and technical papers, written and attended by engineers, geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, and managers discuss various aspects of reservoir management. A critical component of reservoir management is the accurate characterization of the hydrocarbon asset, called reservoir characterization. The topic of this course is the process of sequence-stratigraphic interpretation and characterization of carbonate reservoirs. Because of the overwhelming mass of information most reservoir geoscientists keep up with either some aspects of sequence-stratigraphy, or some aspects of reservoir characterization, but typically not both. The authors believe that the two disciplines are so intimately related that the sequence framework should be considered a critical piece of the integrated puzzle.

In recent years there has been a virtual explosion of stratigraphic studies utilizing the principles of sequence stratigraphy. Although the concept of time stratigraphy is not new, the packaging of depositional units into systems tracts and sequences is. This new approach has led to the reassessment of areas that in some cases have been the subject of intense geological scrutiny for decades. The fundamental principles upon which sequence stratigraphy is based are applicable at a broad range of temporal and physical scales. This volume arises from several sessions on sequence stratigraphy held at the Thirteenth International Sedimentological Congress, with emphasis on facies associations within a sequence stratigraphic framework.

This book starts with a review of sedimentologic principles governing the large scale anatomy of reefs and platforms. It then looks at sequence and systems tracts from a sedimentologic point of view, assess the differences between siliciclastics and carbonates in their response to sea level, evaluates processes that compete with sea level for control on carbonate sequence and finally presents a set of guidelines for application of sequence stratigraphy to reefs and carbonate platforms.