Pierre Shale

are overturned and have a steep slope and in the eastern portion of the basin slopes are less steep. Figure 2. also shows each of the units that were deposited in the Late Cretaceous, including the Pierre Shale to the Poison Canyon Formation. The units that are in the Raton Basin according to this figure do not seem to be majorly impacted by the faulting in the basin, although there is still apparent faulting in the area. The Raton Basin is an asymmetric trough that contains between 10,000 to 25,000 feet of sedimentary rocks (Geldon, 1989). The amount of sediment accumulation influences peat deposition within the basin. The amount of sedimentary rocks in the basin may be 15,000 to 20,000 feet thick in the deepest part of the basin (Keighin, 1994). The rocks in the basin range in age from Pennsylvanian to Eocene and are intruded by Tertiary igneous rocks such as dikes and sills (Geldon, 1989). There are several small faults in the mines but they are slight and most of them are due to surface movements that are similar to slumping (Lee, 1924). Because of this settling the coal is crushed in some places and the beds that were originally uniform in thickness have become irregular (Lee, 1924). The Raton Basin is composed of four major units that include the Late Cretaceous Pierre Shale, the Trinidad Sandstone, the Vermejo Formation, and the Raton Formation (Flores and Bader, 1999). Of these units, the coal is found in both the Raton Formation and the Vermejo Formation. The…

marine shale environment and in an alluvial fan. Sea level regression happened. The size of grain for this rock is around the size of clay. Our next stop is the most exciting as is in the time of the dinosaurs. We have travelled to the Morrison formation which is dated to be 150 million years old and the rocks have grain of sizes between clay-sized and 1mm. The Morrison formation has inconsistent lateral thickness as it has thick layers and goes down to thin layers and has tightly compressed…

SAMPLE PREPARATION: Wilcox shale and Pottsville shale samples are tested with the indentation method in this experiment. Both samples are quartz rich and silty shales which contain about 45 to 50% of quartz, 40 to 45% of clays and about 5% of plagioclase. Wilcox shale sample is from Louisiana and formed in upper Cretaceous while Pottsville shale samples are from Alabama and formed in upper Pennsylvanian. These two type of shale rocks are chosen because they are “local” rocks which was abundant…

thickest formation of surface bedrock in this area at about two hundred and fifty meters thick. This formation is a layer of shale ranging in color, mainly a…

November the 21st, I visited the Gypsum mine with my lab group: Luke Petro, Liz Morehead, and Kylie Hoef, along with several other groups. After procuring the necessary tools from the geology lab like a meter stick, rock hammer, flashlight, bottle of acid, and helmet, we set off to the mine. Located roughly 100 feet below the surface near Grand Rapids, the mine is now a storage facility owned by Michigan Natural Storage. In the mine, we measured the various rock columns to find how large the…

Introduction Now, Australia urgently faces the resource issue. In this issue, Coal seam gas (CSG) has been focused for new resource. Australia has large reserves of CSG in high permeability reservoirs is one of the reason. By the way, CSG has been met with a mixture of praise and criticism that consideration should be made with regards to sustainability and how effect on Australian community or environment. Definition of ‘fracking’ Fracking is shorthand for the drilling of hydraulic fracturing.…

Shale of the Appalachian Basin With various depositional environments and the understanding of sea level change, the Appalachian Basin formed by the collision of tectonic plates and sediment accumulation under the Earth’s surface. The Appalachian Mountains reveal subsidence belts, faulted marine sedimentary rocks and other geologic rocks in these tectonic settings. The Basin exists in the northeastern states of North America. This large rock formation exhibits collisional tectonics with modern…

The Marcellus Shale Play is a black shale formation lying under the Appalachian Basin running from Tennessee to New York. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that 1,953 billion cubic feet of recoverable reserves lie beneath the shale sediment. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2012) The EIA estimates that shale basins in the United States have a potential to produce from 500-1,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2012). Natural Gas…

Once used only rarely to extract from deep, conventional reservoirs of fossil fuels, fracking has evolved to a widely-used intensive process to retrieve natural gas from shallow, unconventional sources, such as shale rock, tight sands, and coal beds where the resource is not easily accessible (Food and Water Watch 2). Historically, the fracking procedure involved pumping a relatively small amount of acid into a clogged hole of a reservoir in order to allow the continued flow of oil or gas.…

Willow Springs Park runs through the Cherry Hill fault zone and has a history of artesian flowing springs. This paired with 90 years of oil production, a new urban farm, and Coastal Sage Scrub (CSS) community makes the park a uniquely diverse environment. The purpose of conducting research at Willow Springs Park is to monitor the growth of CSS, which consists of low-growing shrubs, many of which are summer deciduous, with some succulents and long-lived grasses, sages, buckwheats, etc. CSS…