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Abstract


 
Chapter from: M 65:  Salt Tectonics: A Global Perspective
Edited By 
M.P.A. Jackson, D.G. Roberts, and S. Snelson

Authors:
J. Letouzey, B. Colletta, R. Vially, and J. C. Chermette

Structure, Tectonics, Paleostructure

Published 1995 as part of Memoir 65
Copyright © 1995 The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.   All Rights Reserved.
 
Letouzey, J., B. Colletta, R. Vially, and J. C. Chermette, 1995, Evolution of salt-related structures in compressional settings, in M. P. A. Jackson, D. G. Roberts, and S. Snelson, eds., Salt tectonics: a global perspective: AAPG Memoir 65, p. 41-60.
Chapter 3
Evolution of Salt-Related Structures in Compressional Settings
J. Letouzey

B. Colletta

R. Vially

Institut Français du Pétrole
Rueil-Malmaison, France

 J. C. Chermette

Total
Paris La Défense, France
 
 

 
Abstract

 Sandbox experiments analyzed by computerized X-ray tomography provide relevant models of salt-related contractional structures and improve understanding of the relative importance of the many parameters influencing structural style. In front of thin-skinned fold and thrust belts, the salt layers provide décollement surfaces, which allow the horizontal strain to propagate far toward the edge of the foreland. As shortening increases, older structures forming in front of the system can be overtaken by out-of-sequence faulting and folding. The very low friction coefficient of salt layers induces a symmetric stress system. This promotes pop-up structures rather than asymmetric thrust faults. Salt extrusions are related to former salt ridges or salt walls squeezed by compression and dragged along thrust planes or to local low-pressure zones along crestal tear faults during folding. The salt that spreads out from the fault is rapidly dissolved. The resultant surface collapse structures are progressively filled by a mixture of Recent sediments and reprecipitated evaporites. Salt pinch-outs, either depositional or structural in origin, are a major controlling factor of the deformation geometry in fold and thrust belts. They trigger, either locally or regionally, contractional structures, including folds and thrusts, in rapidly prograding passive margins deforming by gravity gliding. In this structural context, salt pinch-outs also thicken due to differential loading and gravity spreading. The structural complexity in inverted grabens or in basement-involved orogenic belts where salt is present is the outcome of many factors. The salt thickness, the preexisting extensional structures, the synsalt and postsalt rifting, and the related distribution of older salt structures and sediments all localize folds and thrusts during later contraction. The relative orientation of the former extensional structures to the younger shortening structures largely controls the style of inversion (fault reactivation versus forced folding and short-cuts). Salt is the main detachment level between the folded cover rocks and the underlying faulted basement. However, secondary detachments, which are common in the overburden, add further complexities--triangle zones in the cores of anticlines and fish-tailed periclinal terminations.

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