The nature of shallow-water carbonate lithofacies thickness distributions

Research Article| March 01, 2008 The nature of shallow-water carbonate lithofacies thickness distributions Peter M. Burgess Peter M. Burgess 1Shell International Exploration and Production, PO Box 60, 2280AB Rijswijk, Netherlands Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar Author and Article Information Peter M. Burgess 1Shell International Exploration and Production, PO Box 60, 2280AB Rijswijk, Netherlands Publisher: Geological Society of America Received: 03 Aug 2007 Revision Received: 09 Nov 2007 Accepted: 10 Nov 2007 First Online: 02 Mar 2017 Online ISSN: 1943-2682 Print ISSN: 0091-7613 The Geological Society of America, Inc. Geology (2008) 36 (3): 235–238. https://doi.org/10.1130/G243326A.1 Article history Received: 03 Aug 2007 Revision Received: 09 Nov 2007 Accepted: 10 Nov 2007 First Online: 02 Mar 2017 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Citation Peter M. Burgess; The nature of shallow-water carbonate lithofacies thickness distributions. Geology 2008;; 36 (3): 235–238. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G243326A.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Refmanager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentBy SocietyGeology Search Advanced Search Abstract Carbonate lithofacies thickness distributions are of fundamental importance to understanding shallow-water carbonate deposystems because they record evidence of the lateral distribution and migration of lithofacies elements, as well as evidence for the various other intrinsic and extrinsic controls on stratal geometries and accumulation rates. Previous analyses of lithofacies thickness data led to the suggestion that exponential distributions are ubiquitous in the ancient record. This has been interpreted to indicate deposition by stochastic Poisson process lithofacies mosaics. To further investigate these ideas statistical analysis of 56 outcrop and core examples was performed. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to identify the degree to which measured lithofacies thicknesses are well represented by a theoretical exponential distribution. Results from this analysis show that 16 of the 56 examples can be confidently shown to be exponential, while 28 are very probably not exponential. This indicates that stochastic Poisson processes are a plausible explanation for many carbonate successions, but they do not explain all of those tested here, suggesting that other non-Poisson processes, either stochastic or deterministic in nature, or both, must also be important. Thus lithofacies planform geometries, and the processes controlling vertical stacking in ancient carbonate platform top deposystems, were likely more diverse than has been suggested, requiring significant further quantitative analysis and numerical forward modeling to properly understand. You do not have access to this content, please speak to your institutional administrator if you feel you should have access.