- journal_title：AAPG Bulletin
- Contributor：Derek E. Sawyer ; Peter B. Flemings ; R. Craig Shipp ; Charles D. Winker
- Publisher：American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
- Date：2007-02-01
- Format：text/html
- Language：en
- Identifier：10.1306/08290605190
- journal_abbrev：AAPG Bulletin
- issn：0149-1423
- volume：91
- issue：2
- firstpage：215
- section：REGULAR ARTICLES
The interplay between sedimentation and erosion during the late Pleistocene in the Mars-Ursa region, northern Gulf of Mexico, resulted in a complex compartmentalized reservoir. Rapid deposition, directly downdip of the Mississippi River beginning about 70 k.y., quickly filled antecedent topography in the Mars-Ursa region with a thick accumulation of sand and mud called the “blue unit.” This permeable reservoir was rapidly and asymmetrically buried by thick, mud-rich levees of two channel-levee systems. Both systems plunged from north to south with a steeper gradient than the underlying blue unit. Rotated channel-margin slides present in both channel-levee systems rotated low-permeability, mud-rich levee deposits beneath the sand-rich channel fill. As a result of the channel-levee systems, the east-west hydraulic connectivity of the blue unit decreases progressively from north to south until its eastern and western halves become completely separated.