This volume presents a suite of detailed stratigraphic and sedimentologic investigations of the Eocene Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, one of the world’s foremost terrestrial archives of lacustrine and alluvial deposition during the warmest portion of the early Cenozoic. Its twelve chapters encompass the rich and varied record of lacustrine stratigraphy, sedimentology, geochronology, geochemistry and paleontology. Chapters 2-9 provide detailed member-scale synthesis of Green River Formation strata within the Greater Green River, Fossil, Piceance Creek and Uinta Basins, while its final two chapters address its enigmatic evaporite deposits and ichnofossils at broad, interbasinal scale.

Previous studies have shown the Escalante Valley, Utah, is subsiding due to groundwater withdrawal. The magnitude and spatial pattern of this cm/yr.-scale subsidence is mapped with satellite data from a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) using interferometric SAR (InSAR) processing techniques.

Imagine seeing the varied landscapes of the earth as they used to look throughout hundreds of millions of years of earth history. Tropical seas lap on the shores of an Arizona beach. Immense sand dunes shift and swirl in Sahara-like deserts in Utah and New Mexico. Ancient rivers spill from a mountain range in Colorado that was a precursor to the modern Rockies. Such flights of geologic fancy are now tangible through the thought-provoking and beautiful paleogeographic maps, reminiscent of the maps in world atlases we all paged through as children, of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau.Ron Blakey of Northern Arizona University is one of the world's foremost authorities on the geologic history of the Colorado Plateau. For more than fifteen years, he has meticulously created maps that show how numerous past landscapes gave rise to the region's stunning geologic formations. Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau is the first book to showcase Blakey's remarkable work. His maps are accompanied by text by Wayne Ranney, geologist and award-winning author of Carving Grand Canyon. Ranney takes readers on a fascinating tour of the many landscapes depicted in the maps, and Blakey and Ranney's fruitful collaboration brings the past alive like never before.Features: More than 70 state-of-the-art paleogeographic maps of the region and of the world, developed over many years of geologic research Detailed yet accessible text that covers the geology of the plateau in a way nongeologists can appreciate More than 100 full-color photographs, diagrams, and illustrations A detailed guide of where to go to see the spectacular rocks of the region

Investigations about porosity in petroleum reservoir rocks are discussed by Schmoker and Gautier. Pollastro discusses the uses of clay minerals as exploration tools that help to elucidate basin, source-rock, and reservoir history. The status of fission-track analysis, which is useful for determining the thermal and depositional history of deeply buried sedimentary rocks, is outlined by Naeser. The various ways workers have attempted to determine accurate ancient and present-day subsurface temperatures are summarized with numerous references by Barker. Clayton covers three topics: (1) the role of kinetic modeling in petroleum exploration, (2) biological markers as an indicator of depositional environment of source rocks and composition of crude oils, and (3) geochemistry of sulfur in source rocks and petroleum. Anders and Hite evaluate the current status of evaporite deposits as a source for crude oil.

Remnants of Eocene rocks along the modern Teton Range date the final uplift and subsidence of the ancestral Teton-Targhee arch, and determine direction of Eocene drainage.