Author

Ray Boswell

Date of Graduation

1988

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

Regional subsurface correlation and mapping is combined with outcrop study to provide a basin analysis of Acadian clastic wedge deposition in northern West Virginia. This analysis describes regional stratigraphy, deposystems, controls, architecture and paleogeography of Upper Devonian and Lower Mississippian rocks of the central Appalachian basin. A formal stratigraphic framework is constructed that recognizes both highly-diachronous lithostratigraphic units and utilitarian, regional, and informal "chronostratigraphic" units. Depositional environments are determined through analysis of mapped lithofacies trends and geometries with reference to outcrop characteristics of lithologically and temporally-equivalent units. Latest Devonian and earliest Mississippian times were marked by prograding sandstone-rich shorelines fed from the east by a relatively small number of major, geographically-fixed, river systems. These rivers and associated fluvial-deltaic aprons evolved through time, generally reflecting the waning of the third (Catskill) and fourth (Price-Rockwell) tectophases of the Acadian orogeny. Migration of Acadian clastic wedge shorelines and basinal facies was dominated by tectonic controls during the Frasnian Stage. Subsequent shifting of lithofacies was largely in response to eustatic fluctuations of varying order and control by numerous basement structures.

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