Organic carbon (C) and sulfide sulfur (S) contents of host rocks and ore bodies selected from four manganese carbonate deposits were tested and plots of carbon against sulfur of the type proposed by Berner were used to distinguish depositional environments.
A unified study of outcrop and subsurface Silurian rocks from the Brassfield Formation through the C unit in adjacent portions of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia enhances our understanding of regional stratigraphy, paleogeography, and sea level variations.
In east-central Utah, tide-, wind-, and wave-currents deposited the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) Curtis and Summerville Formations and the Moab Member of the Entrada Sandstone along the southern and eastern coastal plain of an interior seaway. Four facies of the Curtis were deposited during maximum transgression and incipient regression. Interbedded, heterogeneous litharenite and sublitharenite microsequences in the sandstone-mudstone facies record the initial transgression and development of sedimentation on a nearshore shelf. Sand and mud were intermittently transported by tidal- and wave-currents at near wavebase depths. The composite sandstone facies contains amalgamated, crossbedded and parallel-bedded subarkosic microsequences which were deposited during late transgression, stillstand and incipient regression in a tidal channel, sand-shoal, berm system. Sand, silt and mud were transported in the form of ripples, sand waves and dunes in tidal channels controlled by spring and neap tidal current. At shallower intertidal depths, interchannel sand shoals and berms were constructed by plane- and cross-laminated strata. Contemporary crosslaminated and locally crossbedded sublitharenites in the rippled silty facies and the redbed facies were deposited by spring-tide and wind- or storm-enhanced tidal currents in higher intertidal and supratidal zones respectively.
The Aspen Grove landslide, central Utah, occurred in older landslide debris. The debris is about 6-15 meters thick, and consists of medium- to high-plasticity clays and silty clays. Persistent landslide structures, including toes, hollows, and flank ridges, outline dimly preserved landslide masses in the older debris.