Date of Award

8-2015

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geological and Environmental Sciences

First Advisor

Dr. David A. Barnes

Second Advisor

Dr. William B. Harrison, III

Third Advisor

Dr. Peter J. Voice

Keywords

Marshall, Michigan, formation, sedimentology, stratigraphy

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

An understanding of regional orogenic, climatic, and eustatic processes is critical to the interbasinal correlation of Paleozoic strata in eastern North America. Tectonic activity associated with the culmination of Appalachian Orogenic events has been shown to have regional influence on paleostructure and sediment dispersal in the Appalachian foreland basin and adjacent intracratonic Illinois and Michigan basins. The culmination of the Acadian Orogeny at the end of the Devonian represents the beginning of a period of general tectonic quiescence extending throughout the early and middle Mississippian in eastern North America. Early Mississippian strata in the Michigan basin is distinctive and marks the transition from marine shale and carbonate dominated sedimentation during much of the Late Ordovician through Late Devonian to siliciclastic dominated deposition throughout much of the Carboniferous. The Osagian, Marshall Formation constitutes an important coarse-grained siliciclastic formation in the Michigan basin.

Despite numerous outcrop studies and early subsurface investigations, the Marshall remains poorly understood in terms of depositional controls and stratigraphic relationships to related Mississippian strata in Michigan and correlative strata in adjacent basins. This work documents sedimentological and sequence stratigraphic relationships in Early-Middle Mississippian, generally clastics-dominated strata of the Marshall and lower Michigan formations (as described in previous literature). New stratigraphic relationships are presented suggesting that the Marshall Formation and informal Stray sandstone units are genetically related and reflect tectonic, eustatic and climatic processes that occurred in the Michigan basin during the early Carboniferous in the Michigan basin.

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