skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Carboniferous stratigraphy of the Appalachians

Conference · · Geol. Soc. Am., Abstr. Programs; (United States)
OSTI ID:6200790

Carboniferous rocks in the Appalachian fold-thrust belt and foreland basins include parts of four clastic wedges. Distribution, composition, and ages of the clastic wedges record diachronous orogenic uplifts along the Appalachian margin. Lower Mississippian Pocono sandstones form the upper part of the Catskill-Pocono clastic wedge, which includes the Devonian Catskill deltaic facies. Pocono rocks reflect clastic sediments transport toward the northwest and west from an orogenic source east of the Pennsylvania salient. The upper Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Mauch Chunk-Pottsville clastic wedge prograded westward and southwestward from the Pennsylvania salient over Mississippian limestone. The southwestern limit of the Mauch Chunk-Pottsville clastic wedge is overlapped in the Virginia recess by the oppositely directed Pennington-Lee clastic wedge. The Upper Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Pennington-Lee clastic wedge prograded northeastward and northwestward from the Tennessee salient. Southwestward in the Alabama recess, the Pennington clastic facies grades into Mississippian limestone, and Lee-equivalent sandstones extend over the limestone. In the western part of the Alabama recess, Upper Mississippian-Lower Pennsylvanian delta systems prograded northeastward over the Mississippian carbonate facies. These clastic sediments are an eastern shelf-delta part of a thick clastic wedge that consists of turbidites in the Ouachita salient. The eastern fringe of the Ouachita clastic wedge merges with the southwestward-prograding Pennington-Lee clastic wedge above Mississippian carbonate rocks in the Alabama recess.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Alabama, University (USA)
OSTI ID:
6200790
Report Number(s):
CONF-8510489-
Journal Information:
Geol. Soc. Am., Abstr. Programs; (United States), Vol. 17; Conference: 98. annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Orlando, FL, USA, 28 Oct 1985
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English