CMC Research Inc.'S Field Research Station and Shell Quest
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CMC Research Inc.’s Field Research Station and Shell Quest August 2nd, 2017 Kirk Osadetz, Donald Lawton and Amin Saeedfar (CMCRI) and Luc Rock (Shell) 1 Itinerary and Route: The purpose of this trip is to visit CMC Research Institute’s (CMC) Newell County Field Research Station (FRS) for subsurface containment and monitoring. Programs performed at FRS will be conducted by CMC in partnership with the University of Calgary and other academic, industrial and government partners and clients. Although the primary FRS research focus is secure carbon dioxide storage (SCS) in geological media, the results and benefits will be more widely applicable to subsurface issues of engineering conformance and containment monitoring. FRS will become a major international nexus for subsurface, surface and atmospheric scientific and engineering research and education coupled with new technology development and demonstrations. It will also serve as a major public outreach tool for SCS. FRS is located on a surface and subsurface site, kindly provided by Cenovus Energy Ltd. covering slightly more than 2.5 km2 in Newell County southeast of Calgary. The field trip also makes stops and addresses environmental changes on geological and historical time-scales, both progressive and catastrophic, some natural and other anthropogenic. Figure 1, Field Trip Route and Stops This one-day field trip departs from Hotel Alma (Stop A, Figure 1), on the University of Calgary Campus and it visits both FRS and Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The FRS is located southwest of Brooks Alberta in Section 22, Township 017, Range 16 west of the fourth meridian on the south side of Provincial highway 539, 8.4 km west of its junction with Provincial highway 36. Dinosaur Provincial Park is located northeast of Brooks at the end of Provincial secondary highway 210. We will be stopping for a comfort break at Bassano and lunch will be provided in Brooks. Time and weather permitting we will visit the Brooks Aqueduct prior to lunch. The total outbound drive is 297.14 2 kilometres with an estimated driving time of 3 hours 34 minutes, one-way without the stops. From Dinosaur Park we will return directly to Calgary. Field Trip Safety and Protocols: We want this to be a pleasant and safe trip for all. It is our plan to be back in Calgary prior to 7 p.m. Friday evening. We will be travelling as a large group on highways and roadways. Please conduct yourself in a safe and prudent manner at all times. Some corporations have very strict HSE&C policies so we request that no intoxicants be consumed or used during the trip. Follow the instructions of the Bus Driver and your Field Trip leaders. Remain seated when the bus is moving. Exercise prudence and care when boarding or alighting the bus as well as during other times during the trip. When in the field keep with the group (We have arranged for comfort stops during the trip, so please use them). Find a buddy or a group so that your whereabouts are known to others. Inform your leaders or the bus driver of issues or concerns should they arise. Dinosaur Provincial Park is a World Heritage Site and the removal or disturbance of many geological, archeological or biological materials from the Park is a strictly forbidden and punishable offense. Stop A: Hotel Alma, University of Calgary Administration at Stop A: Field trip (Name Tags, Coffee and Muffins) check-in and embarkation point. Introduction to the geological setting of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, the stratigraphy of the Cretaceous Interior Seaway succession, and the Bow-South Saskatchewan Drainage Basin. 3 Geological Setting and History of the Interior Platform Structural Province and the Cretaceous Interior Seaway succession: The Phanerozoic stratigraphic succession of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin occurs in both the Cordilleran Structural Province Foreland thrust and fold belt and the Interior Platform structural province. Phanerozoic strata unconformably overlie the deeply eroded plutonic and metasedimentary successions of the Canadian Shield, a collage of Precambrian Terrains. The Phanerozoic succession is composed of several westwardly thickening sedimentary sequences that approximate the classical sequence defined by Larry Sloss. Figure 2: Westerly thickening sedimentary successions of the WCSB, illustrated by the “Grand Cycles” of Middle Cambrian deposition (Aitken, 1978) which are interpreted to indicate the Fm. of a passive margin on the Paleo-Pacific Ocean on the western side of North America in the Cambrian (Bond and Kominz, 1983), from Figure 8.3 from the AGS WCSB Atlas, (http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/graphics/atlas/fg08_03.jpg) The stratigraphic sequences are: 1. A Lower Cambrian to Silurian clastic and carbonate succession typified by “Grand Cycles” (Aitken, 19) that approximates the Sauk and Tippecanoe sequences the subsidence for which is linked to the Fm. of the Paleozoic passive margin on the North American side of the Paleo- pacific Ocean (Bond and Kominz, 1983). 2. A middle Devonian and Carboniferous predominantly carbonate succession that approximates Kaskaskia sequence which is linked to Ellesmerian and Antler orogenic processes related to locally little preserved and not well understood contraction on the Paleozoic Pacific Margin. 3. A commonly thin, but westwardly significant, Carboniferous to Lower Jurassic sequence of uncertain tectonic affinities that is equivalent to Absaroka sequence. 4. A predominantly coarse clastic Middle Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous succession derived primarily from the impinging Cordilleran orogeny and which forms lower Tejas Sequence, but which 4 drained northward to shorelines on a Boreal Ocean. This succession is locally know as the Foreland Basin of the Columbian orogeny 5. A predominantly fine clastic Lower Cretaceous to Paleocene succession, also derived from the Cordilleran orogeny, but which forms the Laramide Foreland Basin within the North American Cretaceous Interior Seaway, with connections to the open ocean through the Gulf of Mexico. The FRS is constructed in this succession. The FRS is constructed in the Bearpaw Fm. to Colorado Group succession. Stratigraphic relationships at the FRS are illustrated by section immediately west (right) of the deeply incised (Red Deer River Valley) part of Figure 3, while the section exposed at Dinosaur Park is that of the Oldman and Foremost Fm.’s in the same erosional feature. Figure 3: Interior Platform Cretaceous Stratigraphy in WCSB (Figure 33.4 from AGS WCSB Atlas; http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/graphics/atlas/fg33_04.jpg). Currently the Interior Platform Structural province is essentially coextensive with the Great Plain physiographic province. The preserved Phanerozoic succession is about 4 km thick below the University of Calgary and about 2.3 km thick near Brooks. It represents an uplifted, deeply eroded and glacially modified upland landscape that declines in elevation eastward from 1115 m at Hotel Alma to 712 m at Dinosaur Provincial Park. The low relief, localized erosional valleys and eastwardly lower elevations conceal a profound and westwardly increasing erosion interpreted primarily from near surface coal properties and subsurface coalification and organic maturity profiles. At Dinosaur Park the eroded thickness is estimated to be between 2-2.5 km, while on the eroded thickness on the west side of Calgary is estimated to be approximately 3.8 km. At the mountain front the eroded thickness is approximately 8 km, an interpretation constrained by stratigraphic relationships in the Flathead Graben. 5 Stop B: Nose Hill Park Shaganappi Trail Parking Lot: Environmental Change in the Bow River Valley: We begin the field trip on a bench on the north side of the Bow River Valley, which like the Red Deer River is a tributary of the South Saskatchewan River system that eventually drains into Hudson Bay. The Bow River Valley is an ancient feature, eroded into Paleocene Porcupine Hills Fm., predominantly sandstones, with various benches capped by poorly-dated younger gravels, some of which are inferred to be Miocene or possibly older, based on mammal remains (a camel scapula was found a couple of kilometres NW of campus). Figure 4: Bow Valley Geological Setting at Calgary by T. Poulton GSC, (GSC Geoscape Calgary Poster http://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/starweb/geoscan/servlet.starweb?path=geoscan/fulle.web&search1=R=213 244 ;via http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1TEHC_silt-slump-slide?guid=17826a73-46d9-47a6- b877-f1f7040fbe27) 6 During the Last Glacial Maximum the Laurentide (Continental) and Cordilleran ice sheets meet just in the vicinity of the University, with important implications for groundwater composition at the FRS. As these ice sheets melted they impounded Glacial Lake Calgary (Figure 4), the deposits of which cap the prominent bench in the river valley just below the University to the west of the campus (Figure 5a). Paleomagnetic studies of these sediments by Prof. Rene Barendregt of University of Lethbridge finds much slumping and soft sediment deformation such that paleopole directions are not discernable. Figures 5a and b: a) Glacial Lake Calgary Sediments west of the University of Calgary Campus and b) Mazama Ash, ~7700 B.P., which is found in the banks of the Bow River immediately south of Figure 5a and in Fish Creek Provincial Park, in the south end of the city. The Mazama Ash layer, dated at ~7700 B.P. is found near the current level of the Bow River in several places around Calgary. It is the result of a major eruption at the location of Crater Lake Oregon, and it represents one of the catastrophic contributors to the Southern Alberta landscape. During the Drive from Calgary to Bassano: The Palliser Triangle: The Palliser Triangle is a vast region of primarily mixed grassland that was named after Captain John Palliser who led a Canadian Government exploratory expedition into the Canadian west between 1857 and 1859. The area is a semi-arid steppe within the Great Plains of North America that extends south into the United States of America.