DENNISON, JOHN M., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, JONATHAN K. FILER, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, and THOMAS J. ROSSBACH, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

ABSTRACT: Upper Devonian Outcrop Stratigraphy Along Appalachian Basin Margin in Southeastern West Virginia and Southwestern Virginia: Implications for Hydrocarbon Exploration

Plane-table measurements of 12 stratigraphic sections extends Foreknobs and Brallier formations member nomenclature from Hightown southwest to Salem. Farther southwest, blackish shale tongues interfinger with coarser clastics prominent in the northeast. Siltstone and silty shale predominate near Bluefield, but the entire Upper Devonian becomes dark shale at Norton.

Time control depends on mega-invertebrates, black shale tongues, red-bed zones of shallow sea, Center Hill and Belpre ashes, and siliciclastic pulses related to cyclic drops in sea level. Hydrocarbon potential occurs in sandy wedges coming from the southeast and in black organic shale tongues extending eastward from the Chattanooga-Ohio Shale. The Augusta lobe is the strongest source of sand input of the Catskill delta complex in the region, and siliciclastics moved northwestward to pond against the southern edge of tectonically positive Beverly arch. The Briery Gap (Alexander of drillers) and Pound (Benson of drillers) sandstone members are well developed from Hightown to White Sulphur Springs, and the Pound Sandstone extends to Gap Mills. No sandstones reach Bluefield along the Alle heny front, but in the Clinch Mountain belt to the southeast, sand of approximate Gordon age extends southwest to Asberrys. Dark, organic shales at Norton are best developed at the Rhinestreet, lower and upper Huron, and Sunbury positions. Berea-Cloyd sandstone and conglomerate are widely traced beneath lowest Mississippian Sunbury Shale. The peripheral bulge unconformity that wedges out to the northeast in Pocahontas County, at about time of Tully deposition, expands to the west.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90995©1993 AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, Williamsburg, Virginia, September 19-21, 1993.