Tectonic plate fragmentation models for deformable plate reconstructions: applications to the margins of the southern North Atlantic

北大西洋南部的边缘拥有许多世界上最有前途的石油和天然气勘探前沿地区，其中纽芬兰和拉布拉多边缘迄今为止显示出最有希望和最成功的前景。了解这些地区在地质时期是如何演变的，对于回答有关大陆断裂的基本科学问题，对于破译我们现有的资源发现是如何被安置的，以及对于确定未来具有勘探潜力的地区至关重要。随着计算技术的进步，地球科学家现在可以定量地将我们目前的地球模型带回到它们的起源。使用可变形板重建软件包（例如，GPlates），该项目将允许北大西洋南部的演变通过时间加速回到泛大陆，其细节程度前所未有。通过这种方式，可以在空间和时间上研究海洋的开放和关键沉积盆地的形成。在这项研究中得出的边缘的碎片化构造板块模型将被用来生成最真实的板块重建。除了有助于我们不断增加的知识构造过程及其对工业和加拿大的资源经济的重要性，在这个项目期间培训的研究人员将做好准备继续作为学术研究人员或成为知识渊博的技术领导人在加拿大和国外的工业。

The margins of the southern North Atlantic Ocean host many of the world's most promising frontier regions for oil and gas exploration, with the Newfoundland and Labrador margins showing the most promise and success to date. Understanding how these regions evolved over geological time is crucial for answering fundamental scientific questions about the rifting of continents, for deciphering how our existing resource discoveries were emplaced, and also for identifying future areas with exploration potential. With the benefit of computational advances, geoscientists can now quantitatively take our current Earth models back through time to their origins. Using deformable plate reconstruction software packages (e.g., GPlates), this project will allow the evolution of the southern North Atlantic Ocean to be sped back through time to the supercontinent of Pangaea, with a level of detail never achieved before. In this way, the opening of the oceans and the formation of key sedimentary basins can be studied both spatially and temporally as they develop. The fragmented tectonic plate models of the margins derived in this study will be used to generate the most realistic plate reconstructions to-date. In addition to contributing to our increasing knowledge of tectonic processes and their importance to industry and Canada's resource economy, the researchers trained during this project will be well poised to continue on as academic researchers or to become knowledgeable technical leaders in industry both in Canada and abroad.