Interpretation of controls on sandbody architecture in continental settings is challenging because changes in tectonics, climate, and sea level can produce very similar architecture. Using a newly recognized fluvial style which represents the deposits of strongly seasonal river systems, Allen et al. interpret the record of climate change (variable precipitation and runoff regimes) as manifested by in the internal architecture of sandbodies in Mississippian–Permian strata of the Cumberland Basin, Atlantic Canada. Despite the tectonically-active setting of the basin, a coherent climate signal can be deconvolved from the tectonic and eustatic effects on the stratigraphic architecture. The suggestion that climatic factors exerted a primary control on basinal architecture runs counter to many previous interpretations which have tended to stress tectonic and eustatic controls.
Deconvolving signalsof tectonic and climatic controls from continental basins: an example from thelate Paleozoic Cumberland Basin, Atlantic Canada by Jonathan P. Allen, Christopher R. Fielding, Michael C. Rygel, and Martin R. Gibling