The mode of channel-bend transformation (i.e. expansion, translation, rotation or a combination thereof) has a direct bearing on the dimensions, shape, bedding architecture and connectivity of point-bar sandstone bodies within a fluvial meander belt, but is generally difficult to recognize in vertical outcrops. This study demonstrates how the bend transformation mode and relative rate of channel-floor aggradation can be deciphered from longitudinal outcrop sections aligned parallel to the meander-belt axis, as a crucial methodological aid to the reconstruction of ancient fluvial systems and the development of outcrop analogue models for fluvial petroleum reservoirs. The study focuses on singlestorey and multi-storey fluvial meander-belt sandstone bodies in the Palaeogene piggyback Boyabat Basin of north-central Turkey. The sandstone bodies are several hundred metres wide, 5 to 40 m thick and encased in muddy floodplain deposits. The individual channel-belt storeys are 5 to 9 m thick and their transverse sections show lateral-accretion bed packages representing point bars. Point bars in longitudinal sections are recognizable as broad mounds whose parts with downstream-inclined, subhorizontal and upstream-inclined bedding represent, respectively, the bar downstream, central and upstream parts. The inter-bar channel thalweg is recognizable as the transition zone between adjacent point-bar bedsets with opposing dip directions into or out of the outcrop section. The diverging or converging adjacent thalweg trajectories, or a trajectory migrating in up-valley direction, indicate point-bar broadening and hence channel-bend expansion. A concurrent down-valley migration of adjacent trajectories indicates channel-bend translation. Bend rotation is recognizable from the replacement of a depositional riffle by an erosional pool zone or vice versa along the thalweg trajectory. The steepness of the thalweg trajectory reflects the relative rate of channel-floor aggradation. This study discusses further how the late-stage foreland tectonics, with its alternating pulses of uplift and subsidence and a progressive narrowing of the basin, has forced aggradation of fluvial channels and caused vertical stacking of meander belts.
The late Miocene-Pliocene sedimentary fill of the Siena Basin (Tuscany, Italy) consists dominantly of clastics and has internal architecture that reflects the interplay of tectonics, relative sea-level changes and climate variations. Pliocene sediments are extensively exposed and overlay both late Miocene deposits and pre-Neogene bedrock. Specifically, Pliocene basin margin sediments consist largely of sand with gravel and mud intercalations, deposited mainly in nearshore settings with minor fluvial depositional episodes. They grade basinward to dominantly offshore fines with intervening turbiditic sand bodies. New fieldwork revealed that basin margin deposits, notwithstanding lithologically rather homogeneous, are made of a variety of sedimentary facies and bear several unconformities. They have been traditionally described and mapped using lithostratigraphic criteria, that have proven to be unfit to represent such complex stratigraphic architectures. The aim of this paper is to describe the allostratigraphic architecture of the Pliocene deposits exposed in a marginal key-area (45 km 2 ) of the northern Siena Basin by means of a 1:10,000 scale geological map. The recognized succession of allostratigraphic units and their bounding discontinuities, along with new biostratigraphic data from calcareous plankton, provides new insights into the geological history of the Siena Basin and represents valuable constraints for long-distance correlation.
The detection of detached nearshore wedges formed in response to relative sea-level drops is considered one of the hottest topics in sequence stratigraphic analysis due to their importance as reservoir analogues. In fact, they usually constitute sandy and porous bodies generally encased in impermeable clay, thus presenting a good potential as traps for fluids. This paper focuses on the sequence stratigraphic analysis of the Pliocene deposits cropping out in the central-southern sector of the Siena Basin (Tuscany, Italy), a post-collisional basin of the Northern Apennines. The exposed sedimentary succession was investigated through a detailed sedimentological and stratigraphic approach, integrated by biostratigraphic analyses, aimed at a better characterization of the infilling history of this sector of the basin. Specifically, this study revealed the occurrence of repeated facies shifts that allowed the identification of two depositional sequences. In detail, a thick sand-rich body far from the basin margins, and previously considered as a turbiditic lobe, has been reinterpreted as formed in a nearshore setting during a fall in relative sea level. This body is totally encased in offshore clay, and due to the lack of physical connection with the related HST deposits, it has to be considered as a detached forced-regressive wedge. The present work led to the recognition of some sedimentological and stratigraphic features typical of falling stage systems tract deposits (e.g. presence of intrabasinal recycled materials, sedimentological evidence of a pre-existing fluvial network subsequently eroded) that can provide useful clues for the identification of detached forced-regressive nearshore wedges in core studies and poorly exposed settings
In the Alpine-Mediterranean region, the continental redbeds and shallow-marine siliciclastics related to the early depositional phases of the Late Permian-Mesozoic continental rifting are referred to as the most common representative of the ''Verrucano tectofacies''. The Verrucano-type successions exposed in southern Tuscany are diachronous, spanning from Triassic to earliest Jurassic in age, and accumulated within the Tuscan domain, a paleogeographic region of continental crust that due to the opening of the Piedmont-Ligurian ocean formed part of the Adria passive-margin. They belong to the metamorphic Verrucano Group and the non-metamorphic Pseudoverrucano fm. Viewed overall, these Verrucano-type successions appear to manifest five episodes or pulses of an ongoing continental rifting. With the exception of the first episode that developed entirely within a terrestrial setting, each one is represented by basal Verrucano-type continental siliciclastics overlain by compositionally mixed marine deposits, which resulted from four diachronous, post-Middle Triassic transgressions. This suite of tectonic pulses produced the progressive westward widening (backstepping) of the Tuscan domain in the rifting south-Tuscany area.
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