Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
edited by
Daniel Larsen
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee 38152
USA
Sven O. Egenhoff
Department of Geosciences
Colorado State University
322 Natural Resources Building
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1482
USA
Neil S. Fishman
U.S. Geological Survey
Denver, Colorado
USA
and
Hess Corporation
1501 McKinney Street
Houston, Texas 77010
USA
2015
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Copyright © 2015, The Geological Society of America (GSA), Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright
is not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within the scope of their
employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to
GSA, to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in other subsequent works and
to make unlimited photocopies of items in this volume for noncommercial use in classrooms to further
education and science. Permission is also granted to authors to post the abstracts only of their articles on
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publication do not reflect official positions of the Society.
Printed in U.S.A.
GSA Books Science Editors: Kent Condie and Richard A. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Cover, front: Outcrop image of Union Springs Member of Devonian Marcellus Formation,
exposed in the Seneca Stone quarry in Seneca Falls (Onondaga County), New York, USA. Note how
different lithologies are not only present in the exposure but that structural deformation varies as a
function of lithology. See Chapter 8 by Blood and Lash for details regarding the depositional and
diagenetic history of the Marcellus Formation. Photo by Lindell Bridges; courtesy Randy Blood,
EQT Production. Back, upper: Scanning electron microscope backscatter image from the upper
shale member of the Devonian–Mississippian Bakken Formation, North Dakota, of a rhombic-
shaped pyrite crystal with inclusions of dolomite. Petrological examinations indicate that the pyrite
is pseudomorphic after dolomite. The sample is from the Texaco well (depth of ~3367.5 m). See
Chapter 7 by Fishman et al. for additional information regarding diagenesis in the upper shale
member. Image by Neil S. Fishman, U.S. Geological Survey (currently at Hess Corporation). Back,
lower: Schematic depositional model of the late Cambrian Alum Shale Formation, as deciphered
from a core drilled adjacent to the Andrarum quarry, Scania, southern Sweden. Recorded in this
core are multiple events of sea-level falls during deposition of the Alum on a Cambrian shelf, most
of which occurred when bottom waters were intermittently dysoxic. See Chapter 5 by Egenhoff et
al. for additional details regarding the sedimentological framework of the Alum. Model by Sven O.
Egenhoff, Colorado State University.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Sven O. Egenhoff, Neil S. Fishman, and Daniel Larsen
1. Modern muds of Laguna Mar Chiquita (Argentina): Particle size and organic matter
geochemical trends from a large saline lake in the thick-skinned Andean foreland . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Michael M. McGlue, Geoffrey S. Ellis, and Andrew S. Cohen
2. Organic sedimentation in modern lacustrine systems: A case study from Lake Malawi,
East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Geoffrey S. Ellis, Barry J. Katz, Christopher A. Scholz, and Peter K. Swart
4. Pedogenic mud aggregates and sedimentation patterns between basalt flows (Jurassic Kalkrand
Formation, Namibia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Elizabeth H. Gierlowski-Kordesch, Heather C. Weismiller, Alycia L. Stigall, and Daniel I. Hembree
6. Mineralogy and petrology of the Paleocene Clayton and Porters Creek Formations, Missouri,
USA: Influence of Cretaceous-Paleogene impact debris and diagenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Daniel Larsen, Daniel J. Ashe, and John Gustavson
7. Petrology and diagenetic history of the upper shale member of the Late Devonian–Early
Mississippian Bakken Formation, Williston Basin, North Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Neil S. Fishman, Sven O. Egenhoff, Adam R. Boehlke, and Heather A. Lowers
iii
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Introduction
Siliciclastic mudrocks, often termed shales, represent more than two thirds of all sedimentary rocks
on Earth (Potter et al., 2005), yet they are also the least understood. The topic of mudstone deposition
and diagenesis has only recently begun to emerge as important and widely recognized (e.g., Schieber et
al., 2007; Taylor and Macquaker, 2014), mostly because of increasing interest from the petroleum industry
(e.g., Kaminski, 2014). In spite of their fine grain size and low permeabilities, mudstones have contributed
significantly to North American production of natural gas. The abundance of geological units in the United
States that contain economically recoverable amounts of shale gas led to an oversupply and subsequent drop
in the price of natural gas in 2008, from which prices have yet to appreciably recover (Gotham et al., 2013).
But it is not only the petroleum sector that has focused on the significance of mudstones: clay minerals in
fine-grained sediments are sought after to provide raw materials incorporated into liners for landfills (e.g.,
Moran and Hettiarachchi, 2011), both at the base as well as sealing the tops of them. Clay minerals from
fine-grained rocks are also made into ceramics used in every household, they aid in the process of paper
making, are an essential component for producing cement, and are even used in medicine (e.g., Barua et al.,
2014). An understanding of shale sedimentology, the make-up of shales and muddy sediments from different
environments, and modification of muddy sediments by post-depositional processes is therefore crucial for
a wide variety of practical uses of fine-grained sediments and sedimentary rocks. The desire to broaden our
knowledge of mudrocks and further research on them was the motivation for organizing a technical session
at the GSA Annual Meeting in 2011, and this volume is an outgrowth of that session.
The case studies included in this volume span two overall thematic blocks: the first one focuses on mud-
stone deposition in several settings and the second focuses on the diagenetic processes that have affected
important mudstone units. The two papers opening the volume (McGlue et al. and Ellis et al.) describe
recent lake sedimentation from South America and Africa, respectively. Deocampo discusses the depo-
sitional and early diagenetic controls on clay mineral composition in modern and ancient lacustrine sedi-
ments. The paper by Gierlowski-Kordesch et al. focuses on sedimentology of Jurassic terrestrial mudstone
interlayers in basalt flows. Egenhoff et al. describe Cambrian marine mudstones from Scandinavia. The
last three papers (Larsen et al., Fishman et al., and Blood and Lash) describe the diagenesis of mudrocks in
ancient marine successions.
It is well known that lacustrine rocks have been the source for petroleum in a variety of sedimentary
units around the world (Katz and Lin, 2014). In Chapter 1, McGlue et al. describe deep-lake strata of modern
Laguna Mar Chiquita in central Argentina. This lake records deposition of potential source rocks during lake-
level highstands and shows only minimal lateral variation of organic-rich facies in the profundal part of this
lacustrine setting. The paper stresses the importance of lake basins in thick-skinned foreland basins where
they may represent valuable source rocks and unconventional reservoirs, whereas in thin-skinned settings
back-bulge and wetland strata are more important.
In contrast, a modern tropical rift basin provides the study area for Chapter 2 by Ellis et al. Their inves-
tigations of the organic geochemistry show that about one third of the organic material in the lake sediments
stems from primary productivity in Lake Malawi. Dilution of organic matter by inorganic sediment in Lake
Malawi plays a key role in determining the organic content of the sediment, and the degree of dilution varies
according to the amount of local terrestrial input. The subdivision of organic-rich and organic-poor sedi-
ments on the lake bottom is a result of physical processes: dense, non-organic terrestrial material is separated
from less dense organic material, the latter being preferentially transported offshore. Ellis et al. illustrate how
intermediate water depth areas of this tropical syn-rift lake with shallow bathymetric gradients are the most
conducive settings for source-rock potential, not the most distal deep-lake environments.
Egenhoff, S.O., Fishman, N.S., and Larsen, D., Introduction, in Larsen, D., Egenhoff, S.O., and Fishman, N.S., eds., Paying Atten-
tion to Mudrocks: Priceless!: Geological Society of America Special Paper 515, p. v–vii, doi:10.1130/2015.2515(00). For permission
to copy, contact editing@geosociety.org. © 2015 The Geological Society of America. All rights reserved.
v
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vi Introduction
Introduction vii
diagenetic processes associated with mudrocks in order to enhance our understanding of fine-grained
rocks in their multiple varieties.
Sven O. Egenhoff
Neil S. Fishman
Daniel Larsen
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Copyright not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within scope of their
employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to GSA,
to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in subsequent works and to make
unlimited copies of items in GSA's journals for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and
science. This file may not be posted to any Web site, but authors may post the abstracts only of their
articles on their own or their organization's Web site providing the posting includes a reference to the
article's full citation. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and
positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of their race, citizenship, gender, religion, or political
viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society.
Notes