Fluvial depositional systems / Речные системы осадкообразования

This book is not a revised version of “The geology of fluvial deposits” (Miall 1996), but an entirely different product.
Much of the material in the 1996 book was compiled at a time when the methods of facies analysis and architectural element analysis were maturing and were becoming widely used by the sedimentological community. The lithofacies classification which I first proposed in 1977, and the method of architectural-element analysis, set out in major papers published in 1985 and 1988, were thoroughly documented in the 1996 book (Chaps. 5–7), and little has been done since then to require revisions or an upgrade. A recent summation of the methods was provided by Miall (2010a). As expected, indeed, as was recommended, researchers have taken the basic ideas and adapted them to suit the particular needs of their research projects. Field techniques now include the use of LIDAR for the recording of outcrop images, which may substitute for photomosaics, but the methods of outcrop architectural analysis (Chap. 4) remain much the same. New approaches and techniques for mapping the subsurface have been developed for use in the petroleum industry; these are introduced briefly below and discussed at greater length in Chap. 4 of the present book. Three-dimensional reflection-seismic data is increasingly becoming a standard tool for petroleum geologists, and its interpretive arm, seismic geomorphology, is a powerful tool requiring a deep knowledge of sedimentology for maximum usefulness. <...>