AAPG Bulletin, V. 84, No. 6 (June 2000), P. 805-829.

3-D Restoration of Complexly Folded and Faulted Surfaces Using Multiple Unfolding Mechanisms¹

Delphine Rouby,² Hongbin Xiao,³ and John Suppe⁴

©Copyright 2000. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
¹Manuscript received March 23, 1998; revised manuscript received August 2, 1999; final acceptance November 15, 1999.
²Princeton 3D Structure Project, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544. Present address: Géosciences Rennes, UPR 4661 CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cédex, France; e-mail: [email protected]
³Chevron CPTC, P.O. Box 6012, San Ramon, California 94583.
⁴Princeton 3D Structure Project, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544.
We are grateful to Chevron management for financial support to this study as a part of Strategic Research. We thank Chevron Nigeria Limited for providing us with this data set of a growth fault of the Niger delta. We also thank the Geology Department and the Earth Modeling Team of Chevron Petroleum Technology Company for geological expertise and technical support, especially Eric May, Bill Higgs, Wayne Narr, Jim Phelps, Ken Kelsh, Michele Lo, Steve Garrett, Chuck Sword, Amy Cheng, and Dick Jones. We are grateful to Alan Gibbs, Neil Hurley, John Shaw, Daniel Schultz-Ela, and Richard Stanley for the significant time they spent reviewing the manuscript and for their very helpful suggestions.

ABSTRACT

The ability to extract the history of motions associated with geologic structures is a key element in understanding fundamental deformation processes, for example, the growth of folds or faults in three dimensions, the interactions between faults, and the spatial relationships between deformation and sedimentation. Here, we show how to extract these motions for complexly faulted and folded structures using a new method of three-dimensional (3-D) restoration.