ALBERT

Description: Despite the importance of channel avulsion in constructing fluvial stratigraphy, it is unclear how contrasting avulsion processes are reflected in stratigraphic-stacking patterns of channelized fluvial sand bodies, as a proxy for how river depocenters shifted in time and space. Using an integrated, geospatially referenced, three-dimensional data set that includes outcrop, core, and lidar data, we identify, for the first time in an outcrop study, a predictive relationship between channelized sand body architecture, paleochannel mobility, and stratigraphic-stacking pattern. Single-story sand bodies tend to occur in vertically stacked clusters that are capped by a multilateral sand body, indicating an upward change from a fixed-channel system to a mobile-channel system in each cluster. Vertical sand body stacking in the clusters implies reoccupation of abandoned channels after “local” avulsion. Reoccupational avulsion may reflect channel confinement, location downstream of a nodal avulsion point that maintained its position during development of the sand body cluster, and/or aggradation and progradation of a backwater-mediated channel downstream of a nodal avulsion point. Sand body clusters and additional multilateral sand bodies are laterally offset or isolated from each other, implying compensational stacking due to “regional” switching of a nodal avulsion point to a new, topographically lower site on the floodplain. The predictive links between avulsion mechanisms, channel mobility, and resultant sand body distributions and stacking patterns shown in our findings have important implications for exploring and interpreting spatiotemporal patterns of stratigraphic organization in alluvial basins.

Description: Despite extensive outcrop and previous sedimentologic study, the role of tidal processes along sandy, wave- and river-dominated shorelines of the North American Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway remains uncertain, particularly for the extensive mid-Campanian (ca. 75–77.5 Ma) tidal deposits of Utah and Colorado, USA. Herein, paleotidal modeling, paleogeographic reconstructions, and interpretations of depositional process regimes are combined to evaluate the regional-scale (hundreds to thousands of kilometers) basin physiographic controls on tidal range and currents along these regressive shorelines in the “Utah Bight”, southwestern Western Interior Seaway. Paleotidal modeling using a global and astronomically forced tidal model, combined with paleobathymetric sensitivity tests, indicates the location of stratigraphic units preserving pronounced tidal influence only when the seaway had a deep center (∼400 m) and southern entrance (〉100 m). Maximum tidal velocity vectors under these conditions suggest a dominant southeasterly ebb tide within the Utah Bight, consistent with the location and orientation of paleocurrent measurements in regressive, tide-influenced deltaic units. The modeled deep paleobathymetry increased tidal inflow into the basin and enhanced local-scale (tens to hundreds of kilometers) resonance effects in the Utah Bight, where an amphidromic cell was located. However, the preservation of bidirectional, mudstone-draped cross-stratification in fine- to medium-grained sandstones requires tides in combination with fluvial currents and/or local tidal amplification below the maximum resolution of model meshes (∼10 km). These findings suggest that while regional-scale controls govern tidal potential within basins, localized physiography exerts an important control on the preservation of tidal signatures in the geologic record.