A Comprehensive review of modern stratigraphic methods. The stratigraphic record is the major repository of information about the geological history of Earth, a record stretching back for nearly 4 billion years. Stratigraphic studies fill out our planet's plate-tectonic history with the details of paleogeography, past climates, and the record of evolution, and stratigraphy is at the heart of the effort to find and exploit fossil fuel resources. Modern stratigraphic methods are now able to provide insights into past geological events and processes on time scales with unprecedented accuracy and precision, and have added much to our understanding of global tectonic and climatic processes. It has taken 200 years and a modern revolution to bring all the necessary developments together to create the modern, dynamic science that this book sets out to describe. Stratigraphy now consists of a suite of integrated concepts and methods, several of which have considerable predictive and interpretive power. The new, integrated, dynamic science that Stratigraphy has become is now inseparable from what were its component parts, including sedimentology, chronostratigraphy, and the broader aspects of basin analysis.

Fluvial deposits represent the preserved record of one of the major nonmarine environ ments. They accumulate in large and small intermontane valleys, in the broad valleys of trunk rivers, in the wedges of alluvial fans flanking areas of uplift, in the outwash plains fronting melting glaciers, and in coastal plains. The nature of alluvial assemblages - their lithofacies composition, vertical stratigraphic record, and architecture - reflect an inter play of many processes, from the wandering of individual channels across a floodplain, to the long-term effects of uplift and subsidence. Fluvial deposits are a sensitive indicator of tectonic processes, and also carry subtle signatures of the climate at the time of deposition. They are the hosts for many petroleum and mineral deposits. This book is about all these subjects. The first part of the book, following a historical introduction, constructs the strati graphic framework of fluvial deposits, step by step, starting with lithofacies, combining these into architectural elements and other facies associations, and then showing how these, in turn, combine to represent distinctive fluvial styles. Next, the discussion turns to problems of correlation and the building of large-scale stratigraphic frameworks. These basin-scale constructions form the basis for a discussion of causes and processes, including autogenic processes of channel shifting and cyclicity, and the larger questions of allogenic (tectonic, eustatic, and climatic) sedimentary controls and the development of our ideas about nonmarine sequence stratigraphy."

Review of the second edition "For geologists and geophysicists studying sedimentary fill of basins, this volume is a valuable addition to their shelves. The book is packed with informationincludes numerous lists of references, and is up-to-date. As a source volume, this book is second to none. It is clear and well organized." GEOPHYSICS

The Sedimentary Basins of the United States and Canada, Second Edition, focuses on the large, regional, sedimentary accumulations in Canada and the United States. Each chapter provides a succinct summary of the tectonic setting and structural and paleogeographic evolution of the basin it covers, with details on structure and stratigraphy. The book features four new chapters that cover the sedimentary basins of Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. In addition to sedimentary geologists, this updated reference is relevant for basin analysis, regional geology, stratigraphy, and for those working in the hydrocarbon exploration industry.

It has been more than a decade since the appearance of the First Edition of this book. Much progress has been made, but some controversies remain. The original ideas of Sloss and of Vail (building on the early work of Blackwelder, Grabau, Ulrich, Levorsen and others) that the stratigraphic record could be subdivided into sequences, and that these sequences store essential information about basin-forming and subsidence processes, remains as powerful an idea as when it was first formulated. The definition and mapping of sequences has become a standard part of the basin analysis process. The main purpose of this book remains the same as it was for the first edition, that is, to situate sequences within the broader context of geological processes, and to answer the question: why do sequences form? Geoscientists might thereby be better equipped to extract the maximum information from the record of sequences in a given basin or region. Tectonic, climatic and other mechanisms are the generating mechanisms for sequences ranging over a wide range of times scales, from hundreds of millions of years to the high-frequency sequences formed by cyclic processes lasting a few tens of thousands of years

The updated textbook is intended to serve as an advanced and detailed treatment of the evolution of the subject of stratigraphy from its disparate beginnings as separate studies of sedimentology, lithostratigraphy, chronostratigraphy, etc., into a modern integrated discipline in which all components are necessary. There is a historical introduction, which now includes information about the timeline of the evolution of the components of modern stratigraphy. The elements of the various components (facies analysis, sequence stratigraphy, mapping methods, chronostratigraphic methods, etc.) are outlined, and a chapter discussing the modern synthesis is included near the end of the book, which closes with a discussion of future research trends in the study of time as preserved in the stratigraphic record.