Stratigraphic analysis of the carboniferous rocks of the Central Appalachian Basin

A series of seven cross sections was constructed across part of the Central Appalachian Basin in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. Information used to make these sections included well logs, coal-company core descriptions, measured sections, and mapped surface geology. The cross sections were used to establish a stratigraphic and structural framework for the Central Appalachian Basin. Newly discovered surface and subsurface structural features such as faults, folds, and flexures, are described. A new, unofficial lithostratigraphic nomenclature was introduced to illustrate the stratigraphic framework, and a regional unconformity was interpreted to occur between the Pennsylvanian Pocahontas Formation and the Pennsylvanian New River Formation. The cross sections reveal that sequential truncation of formations below the unconformity occurs to the northwest in the basin. A regional unconformity and biostratigraphic evidence indicate that the Carboniferous rocks were deposited in a series of several small-scale environmental continua.; Pennsylvanian rocks overlying the regional unconformity sequentially overlap the underlying rocks to the northwest in the basin. Belts of quartzose sandstones (Lee Formation) within the overlying rocks, are oriented northeast-southwest. Succeeding sandstone belts onlap the unconformity to the northwest within the basin. A fluvial origin is suggested for the quartzose, conglomeratic sands of the Lee Formation. The source for these sands may have been reworked sediments derived from the Old Red Sandstone "continent" to the northeast in Canada. The remaining Pennsylvanian coal-bearing clastic rocks (Breathitt Group) were deposited as clastic wedges derived from the east and southeast on coastal lowlands.