Overnight formation of a bouldery alluvial fan by a torrential rain in a granitic mountain (Mt. Seoraksan, Republic of Korea)

Mt. Seoraksan, Korea, is a rugged granitic mountain where extremely steep slopes and strongly seasonal rainfall have facilitated bedrock exposure and geomorphic changes mainly by rockfalls and streamflows. Although the environment was not suitable for alluvial fan formation, a bouldery alluvial fan, 170 m long and 330 m wide, formed overnight by a heavy summer rain in 2006. The fan consists of several meter-high boulder mounds and gently undulating cobble bars/sheets that are arranged in a fluvial longitudinal bar-like pattern. They are interpreted to have formed by highly competent and turbulent sheetfloods, which temporarily had the properties of hyperconcentrated flood flows. Formation of the whole alluvial fan by a single, casual hydro-meteorological event is inferred to have been possible because a threshold condition was reached in the source area. A rainfall event, which would have had no extreme effects before reaching the threshold, could probably trigger massive remobilization of bouldery sediments on the valley floors. The Seoraksan alluvial fan thus demonstrates the role of a geomorphic threshold in causing drastic changes in the hydrologic performance of the watershed. The morphology and sedimentology of the Seoraksan alluvial fan suggest that the fan is a modern example of a sheetflood-dominated alluvial fan, which has largely been ignored in spite of their potential diversity and abundance in glacial to periglacial, tropical, and temperate environments.

Identifying elusive piercing points along the North American transform margin using mixture modeling of detrital zircon data from sedimentary units and their crystalline sources

The San Gabriel and Canton faults represent early stages in the development of the San Andreas fault system. However, questions of timing of initiation and magnitude of slip on these structures remain unresolved, with published estimates ranging from 42–75 km and likely starting in the Miocene. This uncertainty in slip history reflects an absence of appropriate piercing points. We attempt to better constrain the slip history on these faults by quantifying the changing proportions of source terranes contributing sediment to the Ventura Basin, California, through the Cenozoic, including refining data for a key piercing point. Ventura Basin sediments show an increase in detrital zircon U-Pb dates and mineral abundances associated with crystalline sources in the northern San Gabriel Mountains through time, which we interpret to record the northwest translation of the basin. by dextral strike-slip faulting. In particular, an Oligocene unit mapped as part of the extra-regional Sespe Formation instead has greater affinity to the Vasquez Formation. Specifically, the presence of a unimodal population of approximately 1180 Ma zircon, high (57%) plagioclase content, and proximal alluvial fan facies indicate that the basin was adjacent to the San Gabriel anorthosite during deposition of the Vasquez Formation, requiring 35 to 60 km of slip on the San Gabriel-Canton fault system. Mixture modeling of detrital zircon data supported by automated mineralogy highlights the importance of this piercing point along the San Gabriel-Canton fault system and suggests that fault slip began during the late Oligocene to early Miocene, which is earlier than published models. These two lines of evidence disagree with recent models that estimate greater than 60 km of offset, requiring a reappraisal of the slip history of an early strand of the San Andreas transform zone.

Addressing a Phanerozoic carbonate facies conundrum - sponges or clotted micrite? Evidence from Early Silurian reefs, South China Block

We describe Early Silurian carbonate reef facies containing amalgamated micritic masses, commonly layered, interpreted to have formed by bacterial processes creating clotted fabrics. However, some curved structures in these masses resemble published images of interpreted sponges, raising the question of their nature, relevant to many carbonate studies including reefs and mud mounds throughout the Phanerozoic. Many lithistid sponges are well-established but others are open to interpretation. For keratose sponges, Cambrian examples are known, but several interpreted cases in later rocks are not confirmed; one example in Devonian and Triassic rocks using 3D imaging did not lead to firm verification. Thus criteria to distinguish sponges and clotted micrites remain problematic. A careful approach to interpretation of such sponges is needed, they might instead be microbially-mediated clotted micritic masses. The difficult process of 3D reconstruction is likely needed to resolve this interesting issue of interpretation.

The Bakken Formation - understanding the sequence stratigraphic record of low-gradient sedimentary systems, shale depositional environments, and sea-level changes in an icehouse world

The Bakken Formation is a major petroleum producer in the continental US. However, its deposition in an intracratonic, low-gradient setting has often been mistakenly described as “layer-cake”. This contribution is designed to highlight the time-transgressive nature of its main petroleum-producer, the middle Bakken member. Correlation of individual parasequences reveal the subtle nature of otherwise invisible low-angle stratigraphic geometries. Sequence stratigraphically-relevant surfaces occur throughout the unit and subdivide the entire Bakken into 5 third-order sequences; one of them is a hidden sequence at the base of the petroleum-producing middle Bakken indicating both a lowstand and a subsequent transgression. The organic-rich shales above and below the middle Bakken were deposited in an oxygen-deficient environment and show several burrow/fecal string types and indications of active currents during deposition. The Bakken records high amplitude sea-level changes during sequences compared to relative low amplitude sea-level changes of parasequences. This, coupled with a likely mismatch in timing of Bakken deposition relative to world-wide ice-age-induced cyclicity makes it unlikely that the Bakken sea-level fluctuations were dominated by glaciation.