Journal of Petroleum Geology, Vol.14,
No.4, pp. 475-478, 1990
©Copyright 2000 Scientific Press,
Ltd.
ALTERNATIVES TO
HALOKINESIS IN SALT DIAPIRISM
M. K. Jenyon*
* 18 Towncourt Crescent Petts
Wood, Orpington, Kent BR5 1PQ; (also: Dept. of Geology, Birkbeck
College, University of London). Details of references cited in
this paper will be supplied by the Author on request.
Over the past decade, and particularly in
the last two or three years, there has been a change in the
climate of thought on some aspects of salt geology and salt
tectonics. Specifically, there has been a tendency to consider
the development of many salt structures as being a result of
non-halokinetic processes, in contrast to the strong emphasis
placed upon halokinesis--gravity-controlled, isostatic vertical
movements in the mobile salt/clastic overburden system--since the
seminal work of Trusheim (1960), and Sanneman (1968), especially
during the 1950s and 1960s. It was indeed Trusheim who coined the
term "halokinesis" to describe the developmental
processes he had studied in the salt diapir province of Northern
Germany. His explanation of the multistage process of salt diapir
development has been accepted and applied in salt basins the
world over to elucidate some highly complex structures. Its
success follows the intellectually-satisfying way in which it is
able to describe the morphological changes undergone by a rising
salt structure, and to relate these to depositional features
observable (particularly in modern seismic data) in the adjacent
and overlying clastic sediments.
