Stratigraphic Correlation of Middle Triassic Sequences among Different Paleogeographic Sedimentary Facies in South China

Affected by the Indosinian movement, the sediments in the main part of South China, Yangtze platform, started to transform from marine to continental during the Middle Triassic. In the meantime, a noticeable paleogeographic and sedimentary facies differentiation occurred in the marginal regions of the platforms and produced completely different lithologic and paleontologic sequences in various paleogeographic gradients and sedimentary facies areas, which brought about the difficulties for the stratigraphic correlation based on the traditional stratigraphies. This paper proposes to use some characteristic environmental events as the markers of the stratigraphic correlation across various paleogeographic sedimentary facies, considering that some distinctive regional environmental events should have affected at the same time on the entire basin or the connected sedimentary regions and produced some closely related sedimentary records in the stratigraphic sequences though the affected intensity and recorded pattern might be different among the regions. The change of violent relative sea level (generally water depth) and the alteration of tectonic activity summarized from the dynamic mechanism of sedimentation are the best markers of environmental events for stratigraphic correlation. Based on the analysis and recognition of some significant environmental events at the typical stratigraphic sequences from various paleogeographic sedimentary facies and combined with the consideration of the variations in expressed form and strength of the events among different paleogeographic gradients and sedimentary facies, the stratigraphic sequences from different sedimentary facies can be easily correlated directly. Furthermore, the evolutionary history of the whole sedimentary basin can be clearly established.