Collaborative Research: Tectonic Significance of Long Run-Out Coarse-Grained Facies in the Cordilleran Foreland Basin

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1524578
	Collaborative Research: Tectonic Significance of Long Run-Out Coarse-Grained Facies in the Cordilleran Foreland Basin
	John Geissman
主持机构	University of Texas at Dallas
项目开始年	2015
	2015-07-15
项目结束日期	2018-06-30
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	83169(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Sediments deposited in basins in front of fold-and-thrust belts, also known as foreland basins, record the tectonic growth and development of the belts. One prevalent model for sedimentation in these basins is that fine-grained sediments in record tectonic growth of the thrust belt whereas coarse-grained sediments accumulate during periods of thrust belt inactivity. This project aims to test this model using innovative methods to determine the timing of sedimentation in the Idaho-Wyoming fold-and-thrust belt. A successful challenge of the prevalent model has the potential to change geological understanding of how fold-and-thrust belts belts develop. This is of particular importance because the Idaho-Wyoming thrust belt and associated foreland basins host important hydrocarbon resources. A better understanding of basin development will provide important insights into hydrocarbon exploration. The project would advance other desired societal outcomes through: (1) full participation of women in STEM; (2) improved STEM education and educator development through engagement of a K-12 science teacher or undergrad student in the UTeach program, and participation in the Geoscience Teacher Symposium for K-12 science teachers; (3) increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with STEM through development of displays and videos for the University of Arizona Flandau Center; and (4) development of a globally competitive STEM workforce through training of graduate and undergraduate students. For over two decades foreland basin stratigraphers and sedimentologists have used the two-phase model of foreland basin subsidence to interpret stratigraphic sequences in foreland settings. This model hypothesizes that episodes of fine-grained distal sedimentation are the syntectonic response to orogenic growth and rapid flexural subsidence, whereas coarse-grained distal facies accumulate during periods of thrust belt inactivity, erosion, and isostatic rebound. This research project will test this model using geo/thermochronologic and magnetic polarity stratigraphic study of mid- to Upper Cretaceous foreland basin deposits in northeast Utah and southwest Wyoming, a classic foreland. Detrital geochronology (U-Pb on detrital zircon and apatite) and thermochronology (apatite fission track) will determine detrital lag-times (the time difference between the exhumation age of a sediment grain from the source terrane and its depositional age in the basin). Second, better age control in the poorly dated proximal part of the basin fill will be established by using magnetic polarity stratigraphy on fine-grained interbeds within thick alluvial fan deposits located adjacent to major thrust faults. This combined approach allows accurate correlation of the proximal and distal facies, and establishment of the time difference between exhumation and depositional ages of the distal, coarse-grained intervals. Long lag-times in the distal coarse-grained facies and irregular long-term trends in lag-time, this would support the two-phase model whereas relatively brief (<5 Myr) lag-times and a steady to decreasing lag time trend would indicate that coarse-grained sediments prograded directly into the distal basin during tectonic events in the thrust belt and therefore would nullify the two-phase model.
来源学科分类	Geosciences - Earth Sciences
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/68248
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	John Geissman.Collaborative Research: Tectonic Significance of Long Run-Out Coarse-Grained Facies in the Cordilleran Foreland Basin.2015.