Tectonic History of the Rocky Mountain Region

Instructor: Dr. Chuck Kluth, Colorado School of Mines
The fee includes refreshments, workbook, and PDH certificate.
This one day short course will review the tectonic framework and history of the Rocky Mountain region. It will begin with a short review of tectostratigraphic analysis and tectonic maps. The tectonic analysis will begin at the bottom of the geologic column with a brief discussion of the basement underpinnings of the region and Lower Paleozoic cratonic-shelf setting. These shelf deposits… Show more are variably preserved in the region but in some areas provide hydrocarbon reservoirs This cratonic-shelf was interrupted by crustal-scale intraplate deformation in the late Paleozoic, that resulted in widespread development of the Greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The uplifts produced arkosic sediments but the voluminous Late Paleozoic sands are from a distal source. The early Mesozoic represents a return to the stable cratonic-shelf that, in late Jurassic, begins to reflect orogeny to the west. The data support the presence of a low-dipping subduction zone along the western plate margin that resulted in crustal shortening and the development of the Cordilleran thrust belt and the basement-cored 'Laramide' Rocky Mountain uplifts and basins. Hydrocarbons, generated by the earliest subsidence related to thrusting began migrating toward the craton, only to be captured by the Laramide structures. Erosion of the uplifts filled the adjoining basins to spillpoints. Later Cenozoic regional uplift or climate changes have resulted in exhumation of the basins. This process is continuing today and was accelerated during the Pleistocene glacial event.
Instructor
Dr. Charles Kluth is a structural geologist who received a B.A. degree from Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois) in Business Administration in 1971, a B.S. degree in geology from Northern Arizona University in 1973, and a M.S. in geology from Northern Arizona University in 1974. He received a Ph.D. in Structural Geology and Tectonics from the University of Arizona in 1982.
Dr. Kluth is currently principal in the geological consulting firm, Kluth and Associates, in Roxborough Colorado and a research professor holding the title of Distinguished Scientist in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked for 28 years Chevron, including 25 teaching parts of their structural geology schools and for 20 years the head of structural geology training. Dr. Kluth worked on exploration and production projects throughout the world for Chevron and has taught petroleum structural geology training courses around the globe. His specialty is analysis of structural hydrocarbon traps and tectonic analysis.
Dr. Kluth's publications include analysis of structures and hydrocarbon traps in rift, thrust and strike-slip terranes around the world and Late Paleozoic tectonics in western Pangaea.

Show less