Lithostratigraphic mapping of Palaeozoic units in the northern Rhenish Slate Mountains and the contribution of LithoLex

The Rhenish Slate Mountains are one of the classical outcrop areas for stratigraphic research in Devonian and Carboniferous strata. Lithostratigraphic mapping of German parts of the Rhenish Slate Mountains has been performed systematically for over 100 years starting with a mapping campaign implemented by the Prussian Geological Survey in the 1920s. Today, geological mapping is performed by the Geological Survey of North Rhine-Westphalia and published in an output scale of 1 : 50 000. Results are made available via a modern geodata infrastructure for the use by digital map display. We present sedimentological facies models for the time spans of the Middle to Upper Devonian and the Mississippian. On the one hand the lithostratigraphic lexicon LithoLex is the data source of definitions of lithostratigraphic units and on the other hand results of field mapping are needed to classify lithostratigraphic units that are not yet implemented in the lexicon. Our models can work as links between results of field mapping of the northern Rhenish Slate Mountains east of the river Rhine and help to classify lithostratigraphic units, where it is still needful.