Overview:

This series of chapters is designed for geoscientists in their first few years of working in the industry, or those wanting to brush up on a range of applied geological and reservoir knowledge. The eBook will begin by covering fluvial architecture and processes from an applied perspective, followed by shallow- and deep-marine architecture and geomorphology.

This chapter specifically looks at depositional environments of shallow-marine reservoirs; their geometry, and common sub-environments. The schema described are those employed by the Ava Clastics application.

Excerpt:

Classifying coastal processes

All shallow marine depositional systems are affected to some degree by several depositional processes, divided into two main categories: first, a seaward prograding system whereby there is a large sediment supply (e.g deltas, strandplains, and tidal flats), and secondly,  a retrograding system associated with relative sea-level rise (e.g. estuaries, strandplains, and lagoons) (Siddiqui et al., 2017) (Fig. 1). A ternary diagram is used to define these processes in relation to wave, tidal and fluvial influence (Fig. 2), and the relative importance of depositional environment in controlling depositional architecture.