BIOTIC COMPONENTS REVEAL THE ARCHITECTURE OF CARBONATE PLATFORMS AND RAMPS

Efficacy of sequence stratigraphic concepts in siliciclastic systems has been proven by successful applications in both academia and the industry over the past four decades. However, experience has demonstrated repeatedly that the relatively simple advective transportational approach of these models is less than successful when applied to the more complex carbonate systems and can lead to erroneous interpretations. Instead, an approach that includes the use of the changes in the biotic components of carbonate deposits to infer the sea-level trajectory and thereby placing it in the proper sequence framework is deemed to be more meaningful. This is exemplified with several well-studied examples that illustrate the variety of ways in which the biotic components can decipher the architecture of carbonate platforms and ramps. Corollary of this methodology results in sequence-stratigraphic interpretations in carbonates to be more meaningful when attempted through the use of process-product relationships, rather than simply through bedding patterns and bounding surfaces characterization.