Field Trip Guidebooks

1 primary work

Atlantic Coastal Plain Sedimentation and Basement Tectonics Southeast of Washington, D.C.

by Lucy McCartan

Published 8 January 1991

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Field Trip Guidebooks Series, Volume 214.

The Atlantic continental margin of the United States consists of a series of active structural basins and arches flanked on the west by Precambrian and Paleozoic metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary source rocks and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean basin (Owens, 1970, 1983). The tectonic history of each basin and arch is unique, and significant variations in unit thickness and mineralogy can be seen even within a single basin. This field focuses attention on the western part of the Salisbury embayment of the northern Atlantic Coastal Plain. Cretaceous through Pleistocene sediments in the field area record the influence of regional and local tectonism.