Predictive Stratigraphic Analysis

A collection of extended abstracts of papers presented at two workshops on the title subject.

Suitable as a primary text for undergraduate courses in sedimentology and stratigraphy."--BOOK JACKET.

A Comprehensive review of modern stratigraphic methods. The stratigraphic record is the major repository of information about the geological history of Earth, a record stretching back for nearly 4 billion years. Stratigraphic studies fill out our planet’s plate-tectonic history with the details of paleogeography, past climates, and the record of evolution, and stratigraphy is at the heart of the effort to find and exploit fossil fuel resources. Modern stratigraphic methods are now able to provide insights into past geological events and processes on time scales with unprecedented accuracy and precision, and have added much to our understanding of global tectonic and climatic processes. It has taken 200 years and a modern revolution to bring all the necessary developments together to create the modern, dynamic science that this book sets out to describe. Stratigraphy now consists of a suite of integrated concepts and methods, several of which have considerable predictive and interpretive power. The new, integrated, dynamic science that Stratigraphy has become is now inseparable from what were its component parts, including sedimentology, chronostratigraphy, and the broader aspects of basin analysis.

Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, is the science of describing the vertical and lateral relationships of different rock formations formed through time to understand the earth history. These relationships may be based on lithologic properties (named lithostratigraphy), fossil content (labeled biostratigraphy), magnetic properties (called magnetostratigraphy), chemical features (named chemostratigraphy), reflection seismology (named seismic stratigraphy), age relations (called chronostratigraphy). Also, it refers to archaeological deposits called archaeological stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is built on the concept "the present is the key to the past" which was first outlined by James Hutton in the late 1700s and developed by Charles Lyell in the early 1800s. This book focuses particularly on application of geophysical methods in stratigraphic investigations and stratigraphic analysis of layered basin deposits from different geologic settings and present continental areas extending from Mexico region (north America) through Alpine belt including Italy, Greece, Iraq to Russia (northern Asia).