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Walther law

The Law of the Correlation (or Succession) of Facies of the German geologist Johannes Walther (18601937) is used widely in the interpretation of sedimentary sections. Though recognized earlier in Europe, Middleton, (1973) recognized and proselytized Walther's work as a pioneer stratigrapher-sedimentologist in the USA. Johannes Walther studied the relationship of facies to depositional setting. He recognized that as depositional environments change their lateral position and fill accommodation, so the sedimentary facies of adjacent depositional settings succeed one another as a vertical sequence. Thus, as is demonstrated in the figure below of a carbonate shoreline setting, Walther's Law proposes that the vertical progression of facies should be the same as corresponding lateral facies changes.

Walther law
Even though Walther's Law states that "Facies adjacent to one another in a continuous vertical sequence also accumulated adjacent to one another laterally" one should recognize however:

Walther's Law can only apply to a section without unconformities. Walther's Law can only apply to a section without subdividing diachronous boundaries, including transgressive surfaces (TS) and the maximum flooding surfaces (mfs).

Undoubtedly Walther built from the earlier geological concepts of others. For instance Amanz Gressly (1814-1865), a Swiss geologist working on the stratigraphy of younger Jurassic rocks of the Swiss Jura, came to the same realization that the vertical and horizontal relations of facies must be compatible in terms of the environments that each represents. Paradoxically, though parasequences, parasequence sets and sequences are subdivided by diachronous surfaces, Walther's Law is used to interpret the depositional setting of these parcels of sediment. The diachronous character of the subdividing surfaces is, to all intents and purposes, ignored and instead it is assumed that the packets of sediment forming parasequences, parasequence sets and sequences accumulated penecontemporaneously. In other words the sediments below and above the boundaries of the sedimentary units in question are either older, or conversely younger, than that unit. In other words sediments of a sedimentary unit, a parasequence, parasequence set and are assumed to have accumulated synchronously. The coupling of the "over simple" generalization of the penecontemporaneous relationship of sediment accumulation and the application of Walther's Law have made this law a very POWERFUL tool and all sedimentary stratigraphers use it! In fact the assumption of the synchronicity of sediment accumulation coupled to the application of Walther's Law is fundemental to the interpretation of the sedimentary record. An example of the application of Walther's Law can be seen in Coe et al's (2003) interpretation of the depositional setting of high frequency clastic parasequences from sections measured in the Book Cliff escarpment. Here eastward prograding clastic wedges of sands and shales mark the Campanian shoreline of the Uinta and Piceance basin of Colorado and Utah (click on link in the left column). Also Dawn Sumnerd has placed a lecture on Walther's Law on YouTube with other stratigraphic topics. The original Walther's Law was stated as follows: "The various deposits of the same facies areas and similarly the sum of the rocks of different facies areas are formed beside each other in space, though in cross-section we see them lying on top of each other. As with biotopes, it is a basic statement of far-reaching significance that only those facies and facies areas can be superimposed primarily which can be observed beside each other at the present time." (Middleton, 1973) References and Links Middleton, G. V., 1973, Johannes Walther's Law of the Correlation of Facies: Geological

Walther law
Society of America Bulletin, v. 84, p. 979-988. http://www.arches.uga.edu/~rfreeman/sed_rocks_questions.html

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