Parasequences and stacking patterns[edit]

A parasequence is a relatively conformable, genetically related succession of beds and bedsets

bounded by marine flooding surfaces and their correlative surfaces. The flooding surfaces bounding
parasequences are not of the same scale as the regional transgressive surface that is associated
with a sequence boundary.
The parasequences are the separated into stacking patterns:

Aggradational

Progradational

Retrogradational

Each stacking pattern will give different information on the behaviour of accommodation space, a
major control of which is relative level. So a rapidly progradational pattern will be indicative of falling
sea level, rapidly retrogradational is evidence for rapidly transgressing sea level and aggradational
will be indicative of gently rising sea level.

Sea level through geologic time[edit]

Comparison of two sea level reconstructions during the last 500 Myr. The black bar shows the magnitude of
sea level change during the Quaternary glaciations; this is for the past few million years, but the bar is offset
further in the past for readability.

Sea level changes over geologic time. The graph on the right illustrates two recent interpretations of
sea level changes during the Phanerozoic. The modern age is depicted on the left side, labeled N
for Neogene. The blue spikes near date zero represent the sea level changes associated with
the most recent glacial period, which reached its maximum extent about 20,000 years Before
Present (BP). During this glaciation event, the world's sea level was about 320 feet (98 meters)

lower than today, due to the large amount of sea water that had evaporated and been deposited
as snow and ice in Northern Hemisphere glaciers. When the world's sea level was at this "low
stand", former sea bed sediments were subjected tosubaerial weathering (erosion by rain, frost,
rivers, etc.) and a new shoreline was established at the new level, sometimes miles basinward of the
former shoreline if the sea floor was shallowly inclined.
Today, sea level is at a relative "high stand" within the Quaternary glacial cycles because of rapid
end-Pleistocene and early-Holocene deglaciation. The ancient shoreline of the last glacial period is
now under approximately 390 feet (120 meters) of water. Although there is debate among earth
scientists whether we are currently experiencing a "high stand" it is generally accepted that the
eustatic sea level is rising.
In the distant past, sea level has been significantly higher than today. During
the Cretaceous (labeled K on the graph), sea level was so high that a seaway extended across the
center of North America from Texas to the Arctic Ocean.
These alternating high and low sea level stands repeat at several time scales. The smallest of these
cycles is approximately 20,000 years, and corresponds to the rate of precession of the Earth's
rotational axis (see Milankovitch cycles) and are commonly referred to as '5th order' cycles. The next
larger cycle ('4th order') is about 40,000 years and approximately matches the rate at which the
Earth's inclination to the Sun varies (again explained by Milankovitch). The next larger cycle ('3rd
order') is about 110,000 years and corresponds to the rate at which the Earth's orbit oscillates from
elliptical to circular. Lower order cycles are recognized, which seem to result from plate
tectonic events like the opening of new ocean basins by splitting continental masses.
Hundreds of similar glacial cycles have occurred throughout the Earth's history. The earth scientists
who study the positions of coastal sediment deposits through time ("sequence stratigraphers") have
noted dozens of similar basinward shifts of shorelines associated with a later recovery. The largest of
these sedimentary cycles can in some cases be correlated around the world with great confidence.
The three controls on stratigraphic architecture and sedimentary cycle development are:

Eustatic sea level changes

Subsidence rate of the basin

Sediment supply.

Eustatic sea level is the sea level with reference to a fixed point, the centre of the Earth. Relative sea
level is measured with reference to the base level, above which erosion can occur and below which
deposition can occur. Both eustatic sea level changes and subsidence rates tend to be longer
cycles. Sediment supply is largely thought to be controlled by local climatic conditions and can vary

rapidly. These variations in local sediment supply affect the local and relative sea level which causes
local sedimentary cycles.
Smaller and localised sedimentary cycles are not related to world wide (eustatic) sea level changes
but more to the supply of sediment to the adjacent basins where these sediments are being
supplied. For example when the basinward (oceanward) shift with progradation of shorelines was
occurring in the Book Cliffs area of Utah the shorelines were receding or transgressing northwards
in Wyoming. These sedimentary cycles are representative of the amount of supply of sediment to the
basin. In a transgression, less sediment is being supplied than the rate of increase in the depth of
water, and thus the shoreline migrates landward. In a regression, if the water depth is decreasing,
the shoreline migrates seaward (basinward) and the previous shoreline is eroded. A regression of
the shoreline also occurs if more sediment is being supplied than the shoreline can erode, causing
the shoreline to migrate seaward. The latter is called progradation.

Economic significance[edit]
These events have economic significance because these changes in sea level cause large lateral
shifts in the depositional patterns of seafloor sediments. These lateral shifts in deposition create
alternating layers of good reservoir quality rock (porous and permeable sands) and poorer-quality
mudstones (capable of providing a reservoir "seal" to prevent the leakage of any accumulated
hydrocarbons that may have migrated into the sandstones). Hydrocarbon prospectors look for
places in the world where porous and permeable sands are overlain by low permeability rocks, and
where conditions are right for hydrocarbons to be generated and migrate into these "traps".