New paper in Geology

Decoupling of foreland basin subsidence from topography linked to faulting and erosion

Guy Simpson, University of Geneva

Published in Geology, September 2014

Foreland sedimentary basins that flank many of the planets largest collisional mountain ranges (see image) are normally thought to result from flexing of the lithosphere under the passive weight of thrust sheets emplaced in the mountain belt and sediments deposited in the basin. However, this model fails to explain why the depth of many foreland basins bears little relation to the weight of adjacent mountains and basin sediments. In this manuscript Simpson uses mechanical models to show that the vertical motion of foreland basins may be strongly linked to slip on major range front thrust faults (and eventually to large earthquake) and can become completely decoupled from the height of adjacent mountains especially when erosion is relatively efficient.

Image (http://earth.imagico.de/): Synthetic image of the European Alps, which is flanked by major foreland sedimentary basins that are the subject of this study.