The coal-bearing strata of the Lower Cretaceous Mannville Group (Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, South Central Alberta), PART 2: Factors controlling the composition of organic matter accumulations

By the analysis of the organic matter composition, seven depositional environments for coal were identified, located at different distance from the coast line. Each depositional environment is characterized by a specific organo-facies association, which is the reflex of different environmental conditions in the peat, in terms of water table level, type of vegetation and hydrodynamic processes. The vertical superimposition in a coal package of different depositional environments has been related to high order climatic cyclicity (5th-order transgressive and regressive cycles), which controls the groundwater table fluctuations.