| Summary: | Sedimentary discharge estimates of the fluvial Festningen Sandstone are used to calculate catchment area, improve tectonic reconstructions in the present day Arctic and US interior, and predict the character of deltaic, oil and gas reservoir, faces of the Festningen Member in the Barents Sea. Outcrops from Svalbard were digitally mapped in order to measure the heights and widths of channels as well as bar-forms found. Samples were processed for zircons and used for grain size analysis. Empirical data collected and used in the fulcrum method enables one to set reasonable parameters on the size of ancient fluvial systems and their source area. The Festningen Sandstone’s typical anabranch channels are 3-4m tall by 40m wide with pebbly and gravely bedload material (up to 12cm) lining the base of trunk channel sections. Contemporaneous channel and bar facies mapped on digital outcrop models show a minimum braiding index of 5, giving the entire braided system a minimum calculated width of 200m for low end predictions. Low end predictions of catchment area are on the order of 50,000km2, comparable to the Tennessee River in the eastern United States. While high end predictions of 500,000km2. Constraints on the size and distribution of landmasses in the sediment source area provide a critical step in linking regional fluvial sedimentary, tectonic, and basin-fill processes.
|
|---|