Stratigraphy Commons^™

Minerals Rock!: Improving Audience Engagement And Interest In Stem Through Enhancement Of The In-Person And Online Mineral Collection At Ursinus College, Juliette Lyons

Environment and Sustainability Summer Fellows

Museums are a vital source of educational resources for the general public. They provide information on a variety of topics and disciplines and encourage visitors to be excited about and engaged in learning something new. As we work to comprehend key topics such as climate change, it is especially important for the broader public to better understand science, including geology. While the geological collection at Ursinus, Pieces of Earth’s History, is not in a museum, implementing methods that museums use can improve the reception of the collection. Through the application of research gathered through articles, journals, books, and talking with …

Marine Geophysical Studies Of Coupled Tectonic And Sedimentary Processes At Active Plate Boundaries, Sarah R. Rysanek

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Deep-sea and convergent margin sedimentary systems preserve critical records of tectonic and climatic processes that shape Earth’s surface. This dissertation investigates source-to-sink sediment routing and forearc deformation to better constrain the interplay between sedimentary and tectonic processes, through investigations of a deep-sea fan system, and the forearc geomorphology offshore Nicaragua. In the Gulf of Alaska, we integrate ultra-long-offset and regional multi-channel seismic reflection data, multi-resolution bathymetry, and plate reconstructions to remap the Baranof Fan system. Results show that the fan is larger than previously recognized and constructed by two primary depocenters linked to distinct glacial sediment pathways, with accommodation space …

Mapping Of Petroleum-Prospective Structures In The Jurassic Complex Of The Western Aral Uplift Based On Seismic Attributes, Yuliya Leonidovna Salaydinova, Marina Georgievna Yuldasheva

Technical science and innovation

To solve the problems of identifying and mapping prospective structures, comprehensive analysis of 3D seismic attributes is widely used at the present stage of geological research; it was applied to assess the petroleum potential of the Jurassic rock complex in the Aral Sea offshore area of the Ustyurt region. The study integrates structural mapping on the tops of Permo-Triassic and Jurassic horizons, attribute volumes (Variance/Coherence, Sweetness, root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude, Envelope) and generalized spectral decomposition (GSD, 19-41 Hz), combined with well-log and well-test data from the Western Aral, Meros, Dengiz and Karakum areas. Variance attributes were used to delineate fault zones …

Constraining The Tectono-Climatic Evolution Of The Northern Rocky Mountains: Insights From Volcanic Glass, Leaf Water, And Leaf Wax Hydrogen Isotopes, Rijumon Nandy

Earth & Environmental Sciences Dissertations

The Eocene-Oligocene period in the North American Cordillera represents a period of great intrigue with complex interactions among tectonics, climate, and surface processes. Although this period is generally associated with synorogenic extension associated with gravitational collapse of the Cordillera, the paleotopographic history remains debated. Existing studies offer conflicting interpretations, suggesting either sustained elevations or modest uplift during this time. Notably, recent reconstructions based on volcanic glass δD values have proposed renewed uplift during the early Oligocene, which needs to be tested with a more extensive and robust dataset. Concurrently, global cooling and aridification during this interval may have been amplified …

Structural Geology Of The Brady Mountain Area, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas: Integrating Field Mapping, Geospatial Techniques, Photogrammetry And 3d Modeling For Structural Analysis, Emmanuel Darko, Zachariah Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much of the Ouachita orogenic belt, representing the deformed Paleozoic rocks flanking the southern margin of the North American craton, is buried beneath post-orogenic Mesozoic and Tertiary sediments composing the Gulf Coastal Plain. The Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma are the largest areas of outcrop for the Pennsylvanian-age Ouachita orogenic belt, making it an ideal place to study the orogeny. This study focuses on the Brady Mountain area within the Benton Uplift, the orogenic core of the Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas. The region is comprised of numerous ridges trending nearly east-west and are for the most part densely …

The Depositional Environment Of The Triassic Cow Branch Formation, Dan River Basin Of Virginia And North Carolina Through Petrographic Study And Geochemical Analysis, And In Relation To Taphonomic Processes And Vertebrate Morphology, Gina M. Workman

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Upper Triassic Cow Branch Formation of the Dan River Basin, located in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina, has long captivated generations of geoscientists. Since the 1970s, researchers have sought to unravel the mystery surrounding the depositional environment of this ancient lake system. This world-class lagerstätte hosts a diverse assemblage of fossil fauna and flora, with a notable preservation bias toward fossil vertebrates, most prominently the archosauromorph, Tanytrachelos ahynis. The geology of the Cow Branch strata continues to evoke a persistent question: Are these sediments representative of a shallow or deep lake?

I undertook a petrographic and geochemical study …

Structural Analysis Of Catawissa Quadrangle, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, Kylee M. Woodworth

2025 Symposium

Catawissa Mountain within Columbia County, Pennsylvania is a part of a much large system of mountains called the Appalachian Mountains. Though little more than hills today, the Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains in the Americas, dating back to after the separation of the supercontinent, Pangea. This presentation is about the structure interpretations of the Catawissa 7.5 Minute Quadrangle, located in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, including fold analysis of the SW trending Catawissa Syncline, formed from Appalachian fold-thrust belt. These analyses are to decipher how the mountain formed from the surrounding regional tectonics and the timeframe of when the …

The Petm: A Window Into Earth's Future Climate, Jacalyn M. Wittmer Malinowski

Climate Change and the Individual, 2025-26

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is not just an event that occurred in Earth’s distant past (~55 million years ago) but is a crucial lesson for today’s meteoric climate change. The PETM offers a historical parallel of rapid flux of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that caused global warming, ocean acidification, dramatic changes in weather, and extinctions. This global warming event was the result of 20,000 years of “rapid” warming (in geological terms) however, we are experiencing rates of warming that are 5-10x higher than PETM levels. We are not experiencing rapid warming today, in comparison to the past, we …

Visualization Of Paleocurrents On A Web Application Using Gplates, Anjan Sapkota

MS in Computer Science Theses

Paleocurrents are flow directions derived from features of sedimentary rocks that reveal the direction of the current of wind or water that deposited the sediment. In 2015, Brand et al. created a global database of paleocurrents, which contains over 1,000,000 measurements worldwide: North America, South America, Australia, Great Britain, parts of Western Europe, China, Africa are fairly well represented; Antarctica, Eastern Europe, and Asia are modestly represented and Russia is poorly represented. The contribution of this thesis is a web application that uses the GPlates’ Application Programming Interface (API) to visualize global paleocurrents through time in an interactive way based …

Glacial Erosion Rates From The Last Glacial Maximum To Present In Southern Patagonia (50°S), Anastasia Fedotova

Earth Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, the notion of exogenic processes (e.g. weathering, erosion) contributing to mountain building rather than destruction has become increasingly supported through both direct observations and modeling. As a result, the details of the link between erosion, and therefore climate, and the tectonic evolution of mountain ranges, have progressively become established. One of the key observations emerging from the climate-tectonic debate has been the role of glaciers as powerful landscape sculptors, sensitive to climate signals. The reconstruction of glacial environments evolution and the recovery of patterns of glacial erosion over time have proven key to understanding feedbacks …

Applied Depositional Geosystems Of The Coos Bay Basin, Oregon: Organic Geochemistry, Maturation, Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction And Biostratigraphy Of The Coaledo Delta During The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (Meco), Allison K. Barbato

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Coos Bay Basin on the southwestern coast of Oregon is a forearc basin that contains exceptionally preserved Eocene to Miocene, tidal to wave-dominated, shallow deltaic to deep marine sediments of the Coaledo Delta. Coastal depositional environments are known to host source, reservoir, and seal rocks. Climate, topographic relief, and geographical position all play an important role in regional vegetation development and oceanic setting. This study assesses 84 outcrop and 12 core samples from Coos Bay for their organic geochemical characteristics and microfossil assemblage to provide source rock characterization information, organofacies descriptions, environmental reconstructions, and age control.

Results indicate the …

Impact Of Lithological Variation And Topology On The Connectivity And Intensity Of Fracture Networks In Carbonates, Fahad Qassim

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Assessing fracture network connectivity in reservoirs remains a challenging task because of the complex nature of fracture networks at various length scales, which significantly impacts fluid flow behavior. Outcrop studies are essential for understanding subsurface fracture networks because intersecting fracture sheets' length, orientation, height distribution, and, therefore, network connectivity and intensity are difficult to measure from wellbores and are typically below seismic resolution. Nevertheless, fracture network connectivity is a crucial parameter and a critical factor in understanding, evaluating, and predicting fluid flow behavior in hydrocarbon reservoirs, aquifers, hazardous waste and CO₂ storage systems, and geothermal energy exploitation. Moreover, fracture …

Tectonic Evolution Of The Northern Margin Of North America, Karol Faehnrich

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The northern margin of North America records a protracted history of Neoproterozoic–early Paleozoic rifting and passive margin development, followed by the middle Paleozoic accretion of continental fragments. Contrasting tectonic models have been proposed for the history of continent separation, the role of strike-slip displacement during terrane accretion, and the Mesozoic opening of the Arctic Ocean. Here, I explore several of these models by investigating Neoproterozoic–early Paleozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks across the northern margin of North American, as well as the main faulted boundaries between displaced terranes and autochthonous rocks of North America. First, I present a new tectonic model …

The Geology Of El Paso, William Cornell, Diane Doser, Richard Langford, Joshua Villalobos, Jason Ricketts

Books & Monographs

The Geology of El Paso describes the history of El Paso, Texas and its surrounding region from the Precambrian formation of the continent to the modern use of geologic resources. This book is written in an easy to digest format, with definitions or links for specific geologic terms and references for further reading. It reviews the formation and evolution of local landmark features such as the Franklin Mountains, Cerro Cristo Rey, and the Sierra de Juarez. Fossils and stratigraphic units of the El Paso area are described as well as important geologic features. The book puts the events that shaped …

The Appalachian System Of Basins And Platforms As A Tectonostratigraphic Analogue To The Barents Sea Shelf: Where Arctic Meets The Appalachians, Gustavo De Aguiar Martins

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Divided between Norway and Russia, the Barents Sea shelf (BSS) is an ~1.4 million km² Arctic province, containing significant hydrocarbon accumulations. However, much of the area is frontier, and geologic data are often restricted or unavailable. One strategy to mitigate lack of geologic data is the use of analogues from well-known, mature basins. Even though there have been attempts to use analogues to study the geology of the BSS, such use is limited. Moreover, no analogue, to my knowledge, has been capable of addressing the regional tectonostratigraphic development of the shelf as a whole.

In this research, the Appalachian …

Structural Analysis And Slip Kinematics Of The Keweenaw Fault System Between Bête Grise Bay And Gratiot Lake, Keweenaw County, Michigan, Daniel J. Lizzadro-Mcpherson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Keweenaw fault is perhaps the most significant geologic structure on the Keweenaw Peninsula, with an estimated 7-11 km of reverse slip juxtaposing volcanic strata of the ~1.1 Ga Portage Lake Volcanics above ~1.0 Ga Jacobsville Sandstone. The fault has been interpreted as a rift-bounding normal fault later inverted by compressional pulses of the Grenville Orogeny or, more recently, as part of a detached thrust fault system unrelated to an earlier normal fault. The fault is shown on published maps as a single continuous fault trace whose sinuosity implies multiple fault segments and complex slip dynamics. Mapping along Bête Grise …

Structural Analysis And Interpretation Of Deformation Along The Keweenaw Fault System From Lake Linden To Mohawk, Michigan, Nolan G. Gamet

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Keweenaw fault is likely the most significant and most studied fault associated with the Midcontinent Rift System. The fault roughly bisects the Keweenaw Peninsula and places Portage Lake Volcanics (~1.1 Ga) over much younger Jacobsville Sandstone (~1.0 Ga). Published bedrock geology maps with cross sections from the 1950s show the fault as a single continuous trace that is locally associated with smaller cross faults and splays. The accompanying cross-sections show hanging-wall volcanic strata having a well-defined, listric geometry with dip decreasing away from the fault to the northwest.

This M.S. thesis presents a structural analysis and interpretation of the …

Integrating Remote Digital Tools Into Post-Pandemic Geologic Fieldwork To Effectively Disseminate Content Delivery And Assist In Overall Understanding Of Various Geologic Phenomena: Summer 2022 Field Mapping Exercises, Nazrul I. Khandaker

Publications and Research

INTEGRATING REMOTE DIGITAL TOOLS INTO POST-PANDEMIC GEOLOGIC FIELDWORK TO EFFECTIVELY DISSEMINATE CONTENT DELIVERY AND ASSIST IN OVERALL UNDERSTANDING OF VARIOUS GEOLOGIC PHENOMENA: SUMMER 2022 FIELD MAPPING EXERCISES

SHAMI, Malek, BETHEL, Cherise, NUNEZ, Eddy, RAYHAN, Salam, KHANDAKER, Nazrul and CABAROY, Charren C.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol 54, No. 5, https://doi.org/10.1130/abs/2022AM-379779

SHAMI, Malek¹, BETHEL, Cherise², NUNEZ, Eddy³, RAYHAN, Salam³, KHANDAKER, Nazrul² and CABAROY, Charren C.¹, (1)Geology Discipline, AC-2F09, York College of CUNY, 9420 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, NY 11451, (2)Geology Discipline, York College of CUNY, …

Regional Correlation And Depositional History Using Well Log And Core Data Of The Geneseo-Burket From The Poseidon 8m Well, Westmoreland County Pa, Usa, Spencer Leonard Williams Jr.

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Abstract

Regional Correlation and Depositional History using Well Log and Core Data of the Geneseo-Burket from the Poseidon 8M Well, Westmoreland County PA, USA

Spencer Williams

Natural gas producers have invested billions of dollars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to establish significant gas production from the Devonian Marcellus Shale and the deeper Ordovician Utica-Point Pleasant interval. In addition, commercial gas production has been reported from several other Devonian shale units in the Appalachian region, including the Rhinestreet, Levanna, and Geneseo-Burket. The Marcellus Shale is the largest natural gas play in the United States. The Marcellus is located directly under the …

Delineating Of The Utica Shale/Point Pleasant Formation Play System To Determine Influence Of The Precambrian Basement In Northeastern Ohio, Jarrod R. Bridges

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Utica Shale/Point Pleasant Formation system has recently become a highly developed unconventional target for oil and natural gas production, leading to an increased desire for knowledge of the controls on deposition of this system. Precambrian basement features have long been known to affect deposition of older strata near these features across Ohio, but the effects of far field tectonics is not fully agreed upon. Precambrian faults and lineaments are known to exist and have been mapped, but are thought to have ceased their influence on deposition by the time of the Knox unconformity during the Cambrian. In the case …

Detrital Zircon Petrochronology For Sedimentary Provenance Analysis: Source To Sink Of The Mississippi/Missouri River Drainage Basin, Sage Denali Muttel

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Detrital petrochronology can provide a detailed look into sedimentary provenance through integrated mineral radioisotopic ages with corresponding mineral chemistry. By combining U-Pb ages and Th/U values of detrital zircon from 13 samples collected from Quaternary sand deposits in the Upper Missouri, Yellowstone, Bighorn, Platte, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Red and Brazos Rivers, an interpretation of detailed signatures that record evidence of the evolution of the Mississippi/Missouri River drainage and the tectonic events that shaped it were observed. Low Th/U values in zircon correlate temporally to convergent magmatism, whereas, higher and more variable Th/U zircon are coeval with known extensional tectonism. Using …

Plate Boundary Trench Retreat And Dextral Shear Drive Intracontinental Fault-Slip Histories: Neogene Dextral Faulting Across The Gabbs Valley And Gillis Ranges, Central Walker Lane, Nevada, Jeffrey Lee, Andrew K. R. Hoxey, Andrew Calvert, Peter Dubyoski

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The spatial-temporal evolution of intracontinental faults and the forces that drive their style, orientation, and timing are central to understanding tectonic processes. Intracontinental NW-striking dextral faults in the Gabbs Valley–Gillis Ranges (hereafter referred to as the GVGR), Nevada, define a structural domain known as the eastern Central Walker Lane located east of the western margin of the North American plate. To consider how changes in boundary type along the western margin of the North American plate influenced both the initiation and continued dextral fault slip to the present day in the GVGR, we combine our new detailed geologic mapping, structural …

Integrated Studies Of Intracontinental Deformation In The Interior Western Usa, Cretaceous To Recent, Jacob Oliver Thacker

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

The advent of plate tectonic theory satisfactorily explained a number of deformation belts around the world. However intracontinental deformation (deformation inboard of a plate margin) remains poorly understood in plate tectonic models. In order to further our understanding of intracontinental tectonics and its effects, this dissertation examines paleotectonic and neotectonic settings within the interior western USA.

Chapter 1 focuses on late Miocene–Recent deformation inboard of the San Andreas plate margin fault and its role on the integration history of the lower Colorado River. The neotectonic analysis included geometric and kinematic fault data collected in key geologic units to characterize the …

Late Cretaceous Stratigraphy And Paleoceanographic Evolution In The Great Australian Bight Basin Based On Results From Iodp Site U1512, K. G. Macleod, Lloyd T. White, Carmine C. Wainman, Mathieu Martinez, Matthew M. Jones, Sietske J. Batenburg, Laurent Riquier, Shannon J. Haynes, David K. Watkins, K. A. Bogus, H.-J. Brumsack, R. Do Monte Guerra, Kirsty M. Edgar, Trine Edvardsen, Dennis Harry, Takashi Hasegawa, R. W. Hobbs, Brian T. Huber, T. Jiang, J. Kuroda, E. Y. Lee, Yong-Xiang Li, Alessandro Maritatai, Lauren K. O'Connor, Maria Rose Petrizzo, Tracy M. Quan, C. Richter, Maria Luisa Garcia Tejada, G. Tagliaro, Erik Wolfgring, Zhaokai Xu

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The Upper Cretaceous sedimentary sequence at International Ocean Discovery Program Site U1512 in the Ceduna Sub-basin of the Great Australian Bight represents a continuous, N 690 m thick interval of black silty clay and claystone spanning the lower Turonian through Lower Campanian (~10 million years). Sediments were deposited in an elongate, ~E-W oriented, ~2500 km long rift system that developed between Australia and Antarctica with an open-ocean connection to the west and a continental bridge to the east. Site U1512 cores provide a unique, continuous record of Late Cretaceous deposition in the Ceduna Sub-basin on the hanging wall of the …

Documenting The Earthquake History Of The Thousand Springs Fault In Summer Lake Basin, Oregon, Usa, Elizabeth Curtiss

All Master's Theses

Defining seismic hazards in low-strain-rate regions such as the northwestern Basin and Range can be difficult due to the infrequency of earthquakes. Revealing the earthquake records of low-strain-rate regions can refine our understanding of the variability of earthquake sizes and recurrence intervals, however, which can ultimately improve hazard analysis. Four active normal faults form the Summer Lake basin, in the northwestern Basin and Range: The Thousand Springs (TSF), Ana River (ARF), Slide Mountain, and Winter Ridge faults. Other than the TSF, the faults in the Summer Lake basin have documented histories that include surface-rupturing (>M6) earthquakes. Scarps along the …

Mapping And Modeling The Seattle Fault Tsunami Inundation In Puget Sound, David Bruce

All Master's Theses

Coastal communities of Puget Sound are susceptible to tsunami inundation from multiple sources. Two sources of potential tsunami hazard that threaten the region are earthquakes on crustal faults in the Puget Lowlands, or earthquakes originating on the Cascadia subduction zone. This study investigated two coastal marshes in Puget Sound, Deer Lagoon and Doe-Kag-Wats, for evidence of a paleotsunami record to combine with tsunami modeling, in order to predict how future events could inundate Puget Sound. A deposit, interpreted as a paleotsunami, is traceable thought the marsh stratigraphy near the modern day tidal inlet of Deer Lagoon, a site that has …

Major Lower Paleozoic Horizons Of The Southern Illinois Basin, John B. Hickman

Report of Investigations--KGS

The geology exposed at the surface in the southern Illinois Basin has been mapped in great detail by countless workers over the past century. With the exception of limited and scattered exposures in incised river valleys, the oldest rocks exposed outside of the Jessamine, Nashville, and Ozark Domes surrounding the Illinois Basin are Mississippian in age. Extensive deposits of Cambrian–Devonian sediments occur in the subsurface above crystalline basement in this region, however. All available data for the region were analyzed to produce a single, comprehensive set of interpretations. The data used in this study include 1:24,000-scale geologic quadrangle maps, oil …

Reinterpreting The Tectonic Model Of The Southern Part Of The Taconic Orogeny Through A Provenance Study Of Late Ordovician Sandstones, Juan Carlos Guerrero

LSU Master's Theses

A provenance study of quartz arenites that stratigraphically are closely associated with major Ordovician K-bentonites has been conducted in order to further our understanding of the tectonic setting of eastern Laurentia during the Late Ordovician. Using laser ablation ICP-MS, detrital zircons separated from Ordovician sandstone samples in the southeastern Appalachian Mountains (Virginia to Alabama) were dated using U-Pb geochronology. Analytical results show three dominate age ranges for the zircons from these sandstones: ~440-490 Ma, ~900-1300 Ma, and ~1300-1500 Ma. In addition, some zircon ages grouped into older ranges of ~1600-1800 Ma, ~1800-1900 Ma, and ~2600-2800 Ma. Zircon ages from ~900-2800 …

Utilizing Dplot, Sedlog, And Arcgis Pro To Enhance Geologic Field Skills: Rosendale, Ulster County New York, Malek Shami, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Stanley Schleifer, Zarine Ali, Leonardo Sanchez, Gugu Ginindza, Tyn Tyn Nai

Publications and Research

Capstone geologic field mapping courses in undergraduate geoscience programs aim to compliment the academic knowledge with technical field skills. As a pilot study, these tools were used to collect field data using folded lower Paleozoic to mid-Paleozoic sedimentary outcrops consisting of clastic, non-clastic and occasional mixed siliciclastics in Rosendale, Ulster County, New York. Rosendale is known for its classic geological outcrops with variable structural, stratigraphic, paleontological and sedimentological complexities – ideal for a field mapping course. Traditionally, students’ data acquisition in the field and its subsequent laboratory analysis to produce a final geologic field report utilized acetate overlays to produce …

Orientation Of Paleostress Of Raplee Ridge Anticline, Loren Randall Holyoak, John S. Maclean

The Compass: Earth Science Journal of Sigma Gamma Epsilon

During the Laramide Orogeny several major folds were formed in Southern Utah, one of those being the Raplee Ridge anticline. Raplee Ridge is approximately eight miles from Mexican Hat, Utah. The San Juan River cuts through the anticline, exposing the Honaker Trail Formation’s beds of shale and limestone with chert nodules. Accompanying the mountain-scale ductile deformation of the Raplee Ridge anticline are decimeter-scale brittle conjugate fractures in the limestone’s chert nodules. The objective of this study is to compare the orientation of paleostress that formed the Raplee Ridge anticline with the conjugate fractures within the chert nodules to see if …