Thank you for visiting my research page. Below is a general summary of my research. The following pages are "fruits of my labor" and are works in progress. I will try to keep this page up to date and include any new information. Some of the figures may be hard to read. Some of the figures didn't come through very good, so I included links to the PDF versions of each figure. If you have any comments, suggestions, and/or questions, please send me an e-mail at ftmmm@uaf.edu.

Things of Interest:

Background:

I moved to Alaska from Wisconsin in January 2000 (what was I thinking?!?. My research focuses on the Carboniferous Lisburne Group carbonates in the northeastern Brooks Range, northern Alaska. I spent the summers of 2000 (6 weeks), 2001 (5 weeks), and 2002 (3 weeks) in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). To get into the field I flew from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, AK on Alaska Air, a small plane was then chartered from Cape Smyth to Kavik (our "base camp"), and finally Era Aviation picked me up at Kavik and flew me by helicopter to my remote field areas. It has been an awsome experience. I have included photos on the photo page.

I have described approx. 2800 m of outcrop in the Brooks Range and 4 cores from the North Slope, AK in detail over the past 3 years.

Research Summary:

The Lisburne Group is a thick sequence of Carboniferous carbonate rocks present in Alaska’s North Slope subsurface and exposed in the adjacent Brooks Range. The Lisburne was deposited on a passive continental margin with an extensive south-ward dipping platform reaching from northeastern Russia to western Canada (Lerand, 1973; Armstrong and Mamet, 1975; Armstrong and Bird, 1976; Bird and Jordan, 1977; Moore et al., 1994). The Lisburne is subdivided into the Mississippian Wachsmuth and Alapah Limestones and the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Wahoo Limestone (Bowsher and Dutro, 1957; Brosgé et al., 1962; Armstrong and Mamet, 1972; Watts et al., 1995).

The relatively distal Lisburne in the Porcupine Lake Valley is approximately 820 meters thick and can be subdivided into the Mississippian Wachsmuth and Alapah (informally lower, middle, and upper) Limestones based on lithofacies and weathering patterns. The 200 m thick Wachsmuth changes laterally from resistant meter thick shale-coral facies in the northern part of the field area to resistant dark (cherty) and light (limestone) banded wackestones with a few crinoid grainstone packages to the south. The 200 m thick, lighter colored, resistant lower Alapah in the north contains ½ m thick cycles that coarsen-upward from shales to crinoid grainstones and then becomes non-cyclic. Cycles to the south are significantly finer-grained and chertier. The recessive, darker colored middle Alapah is about 100 m thick. Cycles in the north are 0.25 m thick, recessive, and coarsen-upward from a shaley base through crinoid wackestone, packstone, and rarely grainstone or rudstone. Cycles to the south are less recessive, thicker, and coarser-grained. In the 260 m thick upper Alapah, the lightest and most resistant unit, cycles coarsen upward and are a few meters to tens of meters thick. The upper Alapah was not described in the northern part of the field area. Overall, the Lisburne Group records initiation of deep-water carbonate ramp sedimentation atop the underlying Kayak Shale. Facies stacking patterns indicate progressive northward onlap of the basal Lisburne and two major episodes of transgression and regression indicating significant relative changes in sea-level.

Modified from: McGee, M. M., and Whalen, M. T., Stratigraphy of the Carboniferous Lisburne Group, Porcupine Lake Valley, Brooks Range, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska (abs.), American Association of Petroleum Geologists Pacific Section meeting, Anchorage, AK, May 2002, p. 91 (poster).