Time: 11:30 am Buffet, Noon Speaker Presentation

RSVP online by Thursday, January 9th at Midnight

Cost: $30 with RSVP, $35 with no RSVP, student members eat free with RSVP (Student Members please directly email the FWGS Secretary to RSVP).

Reminder: FWGS is charged for all RSVP's, so if you RSVP and do not attend you will be contacted concerning payment.

Speaker: Majie Fan

Title: Paleozoic subsidence history and sediment dispersal pattern of the Fort Worth Basin

Abstract:

In north-central Texas, USA, the Fort Worth Basin evolved from a passive margin to a foreland basin during the Paleozoic. Numerous studies have been conducted on the Paleozoic basin fill in order to understand petroleum systems, yet the basin subsidence history and sediment provenance have not been well understood. Our new structure and isopach maps and basin subsidence modeling results show that the tectonic uplift of the Muenster uplift to the northeast of the basin influenced basin subsidence as early as the Middle Mississippian, and the Ouachita orogen became the primary tectonic load by the late Middle Pennsylvanian when the depocenter shifted to the east. New thermal-maturation modeling results show that the basin experienced 3.7–5.2 km of burial during the Pennsylvanian and the fast subsidence lasted at least to the Late Pennsylvanian, in response to the growth of the Ouachita orogen and southeastward suturing of Laurentia and Gondwana. Detrital zircon U-Pb data show that the Pennsylvanian sandstones have 47% Grenvillian zircons and 10% early Paleozoic (500–318 Ma) zircons derived from the Appalachians, and 15% Neoproterozoic–earliest Paleozoic (800–500 Ma) zircons derived from a terrane with Gondwana affinity, most likely the Sabine terrane in the Ouachita orogen. The sediment provenance interpretation suggests the existence of a transcontinental river in southern Laurentia during the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea. This river had headwaters in the Appalachians, and distributary channels in the Ouachita orogen.

Bio: CO-PI Dr. Majie Fan is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas at Arlington. Fan studies sedimentary rocks in order to understand the tectonic processes that formed large mountains and plateaus on the Earth, and reconstruct paleoclimate and paleoenvironment. Fan works on the Rocky Mountain system in the western U.S. and the Tibetan Plateau in Asia, and has received research grants from the American Chemical Society and National Science Foundation. In addition to research and teaching, Fan is devoted in outreaching underrepresented minority students. She has designed and led Geocamp in the past three years, which is a two-day long field and lab tour. The camp introduces what geoscientists do; pathways to became geoscientists; and job outlook of geoscientists. The camp has outreached 35 local underrepresented high-school students and four science teachers. Two underrepresented high-school students and three underrepresented undergraduate students have conducted researches under Fan’s guidance. This outreach theme has been included in all the proposals that Fan has submitted to National Science Foundation in order to continue the endeavor.