| Field Trip Description: The 300-km-long Book Cliffs of eastern Utah and western Colorado are dissected by numerous side canyons and reentrants providing exceptional three-dimensional (3-D) outcrop control of Campanian strata, both along depositional-dip and depositional-strike. This, combined with the near-horizontal structural configuration, makes the Book Cliffs a world-class field laboratory for studying clastic sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy. It is truly one of the few areas in the world where you can walk and drive out time-equivalent depositional units from their proximal fluvial-coastal plain environments through the shallow marine shoreface-deltaic environments and onto the shelf. These famous rocks have been used to develop, test, and refine sedimentological and stratigraphic ideas and models over the years, including the principles and concepts of sequence stratigraphy. In addition, the Book Cliffs strata are regularly used as an outcrop analog for fluvial, deltaic, and shoreface-to-shelf hydrocarbon reservoirs worldwide. This field trip will focus on the following themes: (a) sedimentology and 3-D sedimentary architecture of fluvial, coastal plain, river- and wave-dominated deltas, and shoreface-to-shelf depositional systems; (b) stacking patterns in high versus low accommodation settings; (c) distribution of reservoir and non-reservoir facies in a predictive sequence stratigraphic framework; (d) the relationship between relative sea level, shoreline position, and stratigraphic architecture; and (e) applications of outcrop analog data to the exploration and production of hydrocarbons. The trip should be of wide interest to sedimentologists, stratigraphers, oceanographers, and paleontologists in a variety of academic, government, and industry positions. The Book Cliffs arguably represent the best exposed deltaic rocks in the world. |