SEDIMENTOLOGY

Depositional Environment
Marine
Shallow Marine
Deep Marine
Marginal Marine/Transitional
Delta
Lagoon
Estuarine
Terrestrial/Continental
Fluvial
Lacustrine

Facies and depositional environments

The facies concept refers to the sum of characteristics of a sedimentary unit,
commonly at a fairly small (cm-m) scale

Lithology
Grain size
Sedimentary structures
Color
Composition
Biogenic content

Lithofacies (physical and chemical characteristics)

Biofacies (macrofossil content)
Ichnofacies (trace fossils)

Facies and depositional environments

Facies analysis is the interpretation of strata in terms of depositional environments
(or depositional systems), commonly based on a wide variety of observations
Facies associations constitute several facies that occur in combination, and typically
represent one depositional environment (note that very few individual facies are
diagnostic for one specific setting!)
Facies successions (or facies sequences) are facies associations with a characteristic
vertical order
Walthers Law (1894) states that two different facies found superimposed on one
another and not separated by an unconformity, must have been deposited adjacent to
each other at a given point in time

http://www.gpc.edu/~pgore/geology/historical_lab/environmentchart.htm

Continental
Environment

Shoreline
Environment

Marine
Environment

Depositional environments on the earth

surface control how sediment is transported
and deposited.

Bathymetry zone block diagram model of open

marine depositional environment, from Dunbar