The information on this page is a summary description.
The full formal description is available here: Maat Lignite Bed
| Abbreviation | MlMa |
| Parent unit | Mol Formation |
| Child units | |
| Lithological description | The Maat Lignite Bed is a black lignite layer enriched in clay and of limited thickness. Original observations were made in former extraction sites of the lignite that was used as heating resource in the Mol area, and also in the now no longer exploited De Maat sand pit where the bed was 1-2,5 m thick. Wood fragments were stacked in the lignite bed and flattened tree stems of several meter length occurred in it (Gullentops and Vandenberghe, 1995a). In the subsurface, the bed was mapped within the Mol sand by Gulinck (1962, fig.3). In geophysical borehole logs the bed is well expressed by an elevated gamma-ray signal. The Maat Lignite Bed was chosen to subdivide within the Mol Formation the Maatheide Member above it and the Donk Member below it (Gullentops and Vandenberghe, 1995a). |
| Age | See LIS file Mol Formation for information on the age of this bed. |
| Thickness | Reported thickness varies between 1 and 3 m. |
| Area of occurrence | At the surface, the Maat Lignite Bed occurs in the Poppel-Rauw Fault zone along both sides of the Campine Canal (Gullentops and Vandenberghe, 1995b). To the east of this fault zone the Maat Lignite Bed occurs in the subsurface till the Reppel Fault across which by convention the Kieseloolite Formation occurs. |
| Type locality | At present no outcrop of the Maat Lignite Bed is accessible. Therefore a reference is selected in the geophysically logged and cored borehole Stevensvennen MHL 03/01 ( 032W0460; GEO-3/071-B2) between 22,5 and 25,5 m in which the lithologies in the interval are described as brown sandy clay, lignitic clay, lignite, sandy clay (Vandenberghe et al., 2020). |
| Alternative names | |
| Authors | Vandenberghe, N., Berwouts, I. & Vos, K. |
| Date | 01/09/2023 |
| Cite as | Vandenberghe, N., Berwouts, I. & Vos, K., 2023. The Maat Lignite Bed, 01/09/2023. National Commission for Stratigraphy Belgium. http://ncs.naturalsciences.be/lithostratigraphy/Maat-Lignite-Bed |
