Fault-Related Silurian Clinton Sandstone Deposition in Ohio

Alan H. Coogan

Mapping the thickness of the Silurian Clinton sandstone reservoir and associated shale, sandstone, and carbonate facies in the subsurface of 40 counties in eastern Ohio reveals a general correspondence between major patterns of deposition and the location of faults that strike parallel with or subparallel to the depositional trends. Clinton delta-front sandstones, which occur along a line from Hocking and Perry Counties, through Knox, Holmes, and Wayne Counties northeast to Lake County, Ohio, parallel a line of major change in magnetic intensity in the basement, which is interpreted here to be the juncture between the more stable, less subsiding central Ohio carbonate bank and the more subsiding western edge of the Appalachian basin.

The principal Clinton deltaic lobes occur in east-central and northeastern Ohio. The Clinton sandstone interval is thinner and starved of coarse clastic sediment close to the Rome trough, which is located along the southeasternmost Ohio border.

Sediment distribution patterns indicate that deltaic deposits of Clinton sandstone were captured in the subsiding Rome trough at the border of southern Ohio during the Early Silurian. Farther north, deltaic sediments spread out across eastern Ohio to reach an elongate depocenter caused by minor subsidence at the central Ohio platform edge. There, deltaic sands intermittently filled the delta-edge trough, and spilled out as thin shelf sands onto the more stable platform, a site of predominantly mixed shale and carbonate deposition during the Early Silurian.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91031©1988 AAPG Eastern Section, Charleston, West Virginia, 13-16 September 1988.