Highlights—Rivers on the Down Low(stand)

Many hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs include cyclic strata, and understanding the controls can provide important predictive insights.  In this study, Sullivan and Sullivan   examine the unconformity-bounded estuarine and fluvial sandstones of middle Eocene Domengine Formation of the Sacramento basin, California.  The results illustrate that tectonism controlled the location of incised fluvial and estuarine systems that stack vertically and trend southwest toward the structurally controlled depocenter, but that eustasy controlled the timing of the regressive-transgressive depositional cyclicity.  These results provide a conceptual model for architecture, thickness trends, and facies distribution in this, and perhaps other, lowstand river-dominated estuarine units.

Sequence stratigraphy and incised valley architecture of the Domengine Formation, Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve and the southern Sacramento basin, California, U.S.A. by Raymond Sullivan and Morgan D. Sullivan