Salt-related structures on the Bristol Channel coast, Somerset (UK)

Abstract

This paper presents a new interpretation of well-known outcrops on the south coast of the Bristol Channel at Watchet in southern England. It is prompted by our recent experience of high-quality three-dimensional seismic datasets from areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil which are dominated by salt tectonics. Previous structural interpretations of the Watchet outcrops were explained in terms of extension, inversion and strike-slip tectonics. We suggest that some of the structures in the area are not easily explained by any of these mechanisms, but that they are collapse structures associated with salt withdrawal and imply salt diapirism during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic.

Characterization of Oligo-Miocene evaporite-rich minibasins in the Sivas Basin, Turkey

“…Indeed, the folds can be interpreted as (i) gravitational slumps related to the steepening of the evaporitic strata (especially when fold axes are oriented parrallel to the bordering diapiric wall, e.g. Alsop et al, 2000;Trude et al, 2012) and/or as (ii) deformations related to the squeezing of the diapiric wall as a result of tectonic shortening in the Sivas Basin. On the other hand, the normal faults probably accommodated the fast subsidence of the EMBs together with the uplift of the minibasin borders (Alsop et al, 2000;Kergaravat, 2016), as they generally shows unidirectional dip direction away from the inferred diapir or wall topographic high.…”