Devonian reefal carbonates of the Lennard Shelf, Canning Basin, Western Australia: Field guide for a classic carbonate outcrop of the world

The world-class Middle-Upper Devonian carbonate outcrops of the Lennard Shelf, Canning Basin, Western Australia, allow for examination of long-term reefal carbonate shelf-to-basin systems within a variety of settings and contexts, including hierarchical accommodation trends, global biological crises, greenhouse-to-transitional climatic changes and syn-depositional tectonics. This complex Devonian record contained within the Lennard Shelf outcrop belt has spurred, and will continue to promote, research that advances the broader understanding of carbonate systems, highlights of which include: 1) sequence development across a long-term backstepping-to-progradational platform evolution; 2) ecological, depositional and geochemical expressions related global biotic crises; 3) platform-to-basin facies distributions and stratal architecture related to an interplay of carbonate controls; and 4) the characterisation and prediction of early-formed fracture networks in a variety of settings. The relationships between fine-scale, shelf-to-basin carbonate heterogeneity and seismic-scale stratigraphic architectures demonstrated in these well-preserved exposures also allows for the development of predictive conceptual models of relevance to carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs in the age-equivalent Canadian Alberta Basin and younger Carboniferous reservoirs of the Pricaspian Basin in Kazakhstan.