Highlights—Changing Depositional Regimes and Sandstone Variability

Marginal marine depositional systems vary markedly across strike, but along-strike variability is less commonly explored.  Painter et al. describe study of a 14-km long outcrop window of the Cretaceous Sego Sandstone Member (Mesaverde Group, Upper Cretaceous), and compare the sedimentology and stratigraphy with the well-studied Book Cliffs region.  The results illustrate three sequences of roughly similar thickness to the Book Cliffs, but that this area included more tidal and fluvio-deltaic systems.  The spatial and temporal changes in depositional systems are interpreted to reflect changes in paleogeography, and the authors suggests that comparable changes in subsurface analogs would lead to changes in reservoir quality, continuity, and geometry.

Sequence Stratigraphy of the Upper Cretaceous Sego Sandstone Member Reveals Spatio-Temporal Changes In Depositional Processes, Northwest Colorado, U.S.A. by Clayton S. Painter, Carly C. York-Sowecke, and Barbara Carrapa