Tectonics, sedimentation and salt dynamics in transtensional and transpressional basins, south maritimes basin, Nova Scotia

古代和现代的山脉是大陆地壳碎片碰撞的结果，也就是所谓的地体。陆块边界形成地壳结构和断裂系统，在造山后期仍可作为挤压逆冲断层活动，或在碰撞后阶段以水平位移10 ~ 100公里的大陆走滑断裂带重新活动。在断段重叠带或沿弯曲带，相邻地壳块体的反向位移可引起原山脉活动基底顶部断界沉积盆地的沉降。靠近高山山脉提供了大量的沉积物供应。盆地样式和沉积物来源的多样性控制了陆相到浅海相沉积岩的沉积，包括矿物、煤炭和石油资源。加拿大大西洋地区的大型古生代海相盆地就是这样一个叠加在阿巴拉契亚地体马赛克上的晚造山盆地。它由许多较小的沉积中心和断层边界盆地组成，盆地厚度超过12公里，是由沿阿巴拉契亚地体边界的主要走滑运动造成的。此外，在盆地形成后期，上覆沉积物的荷载作用下，盆地底部的海相蒸发岩（如岩盐）被动员，形成盐底辟和盐流相关的上覆沉积物变形构造。本项目通过对南马里次盆地的构造野外研究，结合新的高分辨率变形监测技术，采用砂-硅树脂模型组成的尺度物理实验，研究马里次盆地的构造演化和盐动员，为该地区未来的石油勘探提供支持。

Ancient and modern mountain ranges result from the collision of continental crust fragments, so called terranes. The terrane boundaries form crustal structures and fault systems that can be still active as compressional thrust faults in late stages of mountain building or may be reactivated later as continental strike-slip fault zone with horizontal displacements of 10's to 100's km during the post-collision stage. In overlap zones of fault segments or along bends the opposed displacement of adjacent crustal blocks can generate subsidence in fault-bounded sedimentary basins on top of the mobile basement of the former mountain range. The close neighbourhood to high mountain ranges provides high sediment supply. The variety of basin styles and sediment sources controls the deposition of continental to shallow marine sedimentary rocks including mineral, coal and petroleum resources. The large Palaeozoic Maritimes Basin in Atlantic Canada is such a late-orogene basin superimposed on a mosaic of Appalachian terranes. It consists of numerous smaller depocentres and fault-bounded basins with a thick basin fill of more than 12 km thickness that were created by major strike-slip motion along Appalachian terrane boundaries. Additionally, thick marine evaporite sediments (e.g. rock salt) in the basal part of the basin fill were mobilized by the loading of the overlying sediments during the later stages of basin formation causing salt diapirs and salt-flow-related deformation structures of the overlying sediments. In this project we apply tectonic field studies in the Southern Maritimes Basin and scaled physical experiments consisting of sand-silicone models with new high-resolution deformation monitoring techniques to study the tectonic evolution and salt mobilization in the Maritimes basin and will provide support for future petroleum exploration in this area.