THE APPALACHIAN SYSTEM OF BASINS AND PLATFORMS AS A TECTONOSTRATIGRAPHIC ANALOGUE TO THE BARENTS SEA SHELF: WHERE ARCTIC MEETS THE APPALACHIANS

• Main Author: De Aguiar Martins, Gustavo
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: UKnowledge 2023
• Subjects: Appalachian Basin; Barents Sea shelf; tectophases; tectonostratigraphy; foreland basins; Novaya Zemlya; Geology; Stratigraphy; Tectonics and Structure; Arctic; Barents Sea; Norway; Siberia
• Online Access: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ees_etds/101; https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2023.374; https://uknowledge.uky.edu/context/ees_etds/article/1112/viewcontent/martins_gustavo_dissertation_phd.pdf

Divided between Norway and Russia, the Barents Sea shelf (BSS) is an ~1.4 million km2 Arctic province, containing significant hydrocarbon accumulations. However, much of the area is frontier, and geologic data are often restricted or unavailable. One strategy to mitigate lack of geologic data is the use of analogues from well-known, mature basins. Even though there have been attempts to use analogues to study the geology of the BSS, such use is limited. Moreover, no analogue, to my knowledge, has been capable of addressing the regional tectonostratigraphic development of the shelf as a whole. In this research, the Appalachian system of basins and platforms and its included flexural stratigraphic sequences are defined as a tectonostratigraphic analogue, aiding the interpretation of BSS tectonostratigraphic evolution. Although temporally and paleogeographically different, both the Appalachian and BSS areas reflect collisional regimes, characterized by early subduction-related orogenies that concluded with a final collisional event. In the Appalachian foreland basin and adjacent intracratonic areas, each orogeny was defined by one or more, unconformity-bound, flexural stratigraphic sequences, called “tectophase” sequences. The BSS tectonostratigraphic succession exhibits several unconformity-bound stratigraphic sequences that are comparable to tectophase sequences from the Appalachian area. These BSS sequences begin with black shales and end with molasse-like wedges of clastic sediments, which suggest flexural responses to orogeny. Much of this succession was deposited across structural elements that were likely reactivated by far-field responses to periods of Uralian–Pai–Khoi–Novaya Zemlya (Late Permian to Middle Jurassic) tectonism, involving the collision of Siberia-Kazakhstania with northern Baltican parts of Pangea. This widespread structural reactivation is discussed herein by applying the backstripping method for analysis of structural mechanisms, based on sediment thicknesses across various BSS structural ...