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地区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的边缘地区迄今为止表现出了最大的希望和成功。了解这些地区在地质时期是如何演变的，对于回答有关大陆裂谷的基本科学问题、破译我们现有的资源发现是如何安置的，以及确定未来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当前的地球模型带回到它们的起源。使用可变形的板块重建软件包（例如，GPlates），该项目将允许北大西洋南部的演变通过时间回溯到泛大陆的超大陆，其细节水平前所未有。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。本研究中导出的破碎构造板块边缘模型将用于生成迄今为止最真实的板块重建。除了对构造过程及其对工业和加拿大资源经济的重要性的不断增加的知识做出贡献外，在这个项目中培训的研究人员将很好地准备继续作为学术研究人员或成为加拿大和国外工业领域知识渊博的技术领导者。

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.