This document provides an overview of facies analysis and depositional environments in sedimentary geology. It discusses different facies interpretations of successive units in non-marine sandstones, including planar and trough cross-bedding, asymmetric scour surfaces, and rippled sandstone and mudstone. It also examines a transect of a Permian reef margin and hierarchy of depositional units, including migrating dunes, changes in hydraulic regime, lag accumulation, bar migration, channel erosion, and allogenic events driven by tectonics, eustasy, climate. Adjacent environments can result in vertical successions with different sedimentary structures.

1. Sedimentary Geology
Geos 240 – Chapter 6
Facies Analysis
 Dr. Tark Hamilton
 Readings from the Holy Book of Tark: (6:1-26)
 Camosun College

2. Navajo Sandstone, Jurassic Desert

7. Facies interpretation of
Successive units in
Non-Marine Sandstones
A&B: trough X-beds
E: Asymmetric scour
F: Rippled SS & MS

9. Facies interpretation of
Successive units in
Non-Marine Sandstones
(Left)
Planar X-beds
trough X-beds
Asymmetric scour
MS
Ripple x-stratified
&
Carbonates (right)
Encrinal grainstones
Oolite Calcarenites
Mudstones

11. Transect: Permian Reef Margin
El Capitan, New Mexico
Sonnenfeld, 1993, AAPG Memoir 57

13. Heirarchy of
Depositional Units
& Hiatus/Diastem
1) Migrating dunes
2)Change in
Hydraulic Regime
3) Lag accumulation
4) Bar Migration
(autogenic, 1 event)
5)Channel erosion
(new flood cycle)
6) Allogenic:
New cycle, tectonic,
Eustatic, climatic

14. Nonmarine Gething Fm
E.K. Cadomin Sandstone
Blairmore equivalent AB
(Bluesky, NEBC)
Marine Fernie Fm Shales
Jurassic
Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous
Hiatus marks regional
Tectonic Uplift across WCB

15. Adjacent environments make vertical successions
Mud Drape
Ripples
Laminated silt
Planar X-beds
Trough X-beds
Erosional scour
Expansion on Gressley’s vertical
Sequences representing changing
Environments
Vertical
Lateral

18. Fining upwards
Prograding Delta

19. Waning Floods Rising Sea Level

20. 1 episode infilling
Serrated, variable hydraulics Bouma C & D or E

22. Modern Point Bars
On a meander bend
In the Milk River
Alberta
“The present is the
Key to the Past!”
Carboniferous (Penn.)
Channel cut and fill
With Point Bar Sands
Alabama

24. Temple of Serapis, Naples
After Lyell’s (1830) Geology
Marine borings
low on columns mark
Volcano-tectonic subsidence
From Vesuvio!
Re-uplift,
despite rising sea levels!
A new corollary for Walther:
The Past is
The Key to the Future.
Boom!

25. Destruction of Seawall
Vero Beach Florida
Hurricane Jeanne
September 2004

26. Bioturbated Ordovician Dolostones
2400 km apart!
a) Boothia Peninsula & b) Garrison Quarry
Arctic Islands versus Winnipeg