MEDAL OF MERIT

Abstract

J. Wadsworth R. Boyd C. Diessel D. Leckie The Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists Medal of Merit is awarded annually for the best paper related to Canadian petroleum geology published during the previous publication year, in this case for 2003. The winning paper this year was written by Jennifer Wadsworth, Ron Boyd, Claus Diessel and Dale Leckie and was titled “Stratigraphic style of coal and non-marine strata in a high accommodation setting: Falher Member and Gates Formation (Lower Cretaceous), western Canada”. The paper was published in the September 2003 Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology (v. 51, no. 3, p. 275–303). Non-marine correlations are notorious for the difficulty in defining significant and traceable surfaces and units. The aim of this paper was to develop a summary model of sequence stratigraphic principles that can be used for the non-marine realm, as the authors say: “the next frontier to be modelled”. The paper also forms part of an ongoing study of accommodation and the response of sedimentary sequences done by this group of co-authors and other colleagues in their stratigraphic modelling studies. The Falher/Gates are assumed to represent deposition in a high accommodation region caused by flexural subsidence in western portions of the western Canadian foreland basin with the thick stacked Falher shoreface cycles also providing evidence of high accommodation. This high-accommodation package provides an end-member to low accommodation basins (e.g., Basal Quartz, Zaitlin et al., March 2002 Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, v. 50, no. 1, p. 31–72; last year’s winning paper) and intermediate accommodation basins (e.g., Upper Mannville, Wadsworth et al., December 2002 Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, v. 50, no. 4, p. 507–541). The Albian Falher Member and Gates Formation consist of clastic sequences shed …