Variations in fluvial style in Westwater Canyon member, Morrison Formation (Jurassic), southern San Juan basin, Colorado plateau
The large-scale architecture of fluvial strata within the Westwater Canyon Member of the Morrison Formation consists mainly of a series of tabular sheets of sandstone 5-15 m thick and hundreds of meters wide separated by thin fine-grained units. These sandstone sheets are commonly flat bedded; however, lateral accretion surfaces and channels 10-20 m deep and up to at least 250 m wide are also present. Where studied in detail, the sheets comprise a complex of elements and bounding surfaces unlike any previously described from ancient fluvial deposits. Lateral accretion deposits, typical indicators of moderate to high-sinuosity channels, coexist in the same outcrop with downstream-accreted foreset macroform deposits now thought to be typical of the sand flats of low-sinuosity, multiple-channel rivers. Broad deep channels with gently to steeply dipping margins have been mapped by carefully tracing major bounding surfaces in several of the outcrops. Fining-upward sequences are rare in the project area, contrary to earlier descriptions. Analogies with the depositional architecture of the large Indian rivers, such as the Ganga and Brahmaputra, still seem reasonable, although convincing evidence now exists for aridity and for major stage fluctuations, which differs from those modern rivers and previous interpretations.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Toronto, Ontario (Canada)
- OSTI ID:
- 5953451
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-880301-
- Journal Information:
- AAPG (Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol.) Bull.; (United States), Vol. 72:2; Conference: Annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Houston, TX, USA, 20 Mar 1988
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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