FTPRE01
Virgelle Member at Writing-on Stone Provincial Park, southern Alberta: Analogue for a Subsurface Exploration Target
Leaders: Rudi Meyer
Date: May 7 - 8, 2008
Max. Attendance: 14 participants
Trip Fee: $550
Primary aim is to provide an overview of high-resolution stratigraphic relationships and depositional facies within Virgelle Member sandstones of the upper Cretaceous Milk River Formation in- and around Writing-on-Stone (WOS) Provincial Park, southern Alberta. Easily accessible outcrops are continuous over several kilometres, and offer three-dimensional exposures to illustrate relevant sedimentologic/stratigraphic linkages between offshore, estuarine and coastal plain environments across a range of scales (from metre-scale bedforms to successions 5-30 km apart). In this area the Virgelle Member is represented by storm-dominated lower shoreface to foreshore successions and sand-rich tidal bars and estuarine channel complexes, overlain by muddy paleosols of the Deadhorse Coulee Member.
The trip will visit localities in a west-to-east transect, from Buckley Coulee, near Sweetgrass, Montana (about 30 km W of WOS) to outcrops along the Milk river in Writing-on-Stone and the surrounding area. WOS outcrops serve to illustrate geometry/architecture of sedimentary bodies and the influence of lithofacies on key reservoir properties, e.g. permeability. Participants will be able to link the various outcrops through comparison of lithofacies and associated surfaces, and consider applicable depositional models. Insights can be applied to the challenge of constructing physical models through inter- and extrapolation of data in the subsurface.
Since we will briefly look at outcrops in the United States participants must bring valid documentation to enter / leave the USA.
