This book is designed as a companion volume to AAPG Memoir 27. As with its predecessor volume, the purpose of this book is to provide identified illustrations of important grains, textures, cements, and porosity types for geologists who may not be specialists in the petrography of sandstones and associated sedimentary rocks.
Sandstone petrography is of particular interest to the explorationist for several reasons. First, it can provide valuable information on the detailed composition of sedimentary rocks. From this, one can often draw conclusions about the lithology, climate, and tectonic history of the source area, as well as predicting the response of such units to a variety of subsurface diagenetic environments. Second, one can acquire significant data on the grain size, sorting, and rounding of sedimentary grains. For lithified sediments this may be the only way to obtain such data, which may be useful in determinations of the transport mechanisms and depositional environment of the sediment. Third, information may be obtained on the postdepositional alteration history of sedimentary rocks. This may include data on compaction, cementation, leaching, fracturing, porosity types, and other factors. These are essential for a proper understanding of reservoir rocks and, commonly, petrography provides the only technique fort gathering accurate data on such diagenetic factors <...>
