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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Special Volumes
Abstract
DOI:10.1306/13291394M952903
Structure and Stratigraphy of the Lake Albert Rift, East Africa: Observations from
Seismic
Reflection and Gravity Data
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Tobias Karp,1 Christopher A. Scholz,2 Michael M. McGlue3
1Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.; Present address: Geophysik GGD mbH, Leipzig, Germany.
2Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.
3Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.; Present address: Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the governments of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for permission to conduct this research and to Hardman Resources Ltd. and partners for permission to study and present the seismic
reflection data. This
seismic
reflection data set was acquired under extraordinarily difficult conditions, and we thank the Hardman Resources field team for their tireless efforts. We also thank members of the Syracuse University field team for their efforts: Jim McGill, Peter Cattaneo, Nick Peters, Phil Arnold, Kiram Lezzar, and Jannadi Lapunkeni. G. Karner generously contributed bathymetric and gravity data that were incorporated into the analyses presented here. M. J. Soreghan and an anonymous reviewer provided helpful reviews.
ABSTRACT
Modern lake basins set within active continental rifts provide useful analogs for exploration efforts in ancient extensional basins that are known to be rich in hydrocarbons. Lake Albert is one of the Great Lakes of Africa and is located at the northern end of the western branch of the East African rift system. This large, but comparatively shallow, eutrophic, and probably geologically ephemeral lake basin serves as an end-member example of the modern tropical lake systems that occupy this extensional province. Seismic
reflection and gravity data sets indicate that the basin contains a maximum of 5 km (3.1 mi) of synrift, dominantly lacustrine sedimentary fill, in two subbasins separated by a midbasin high. In contrast to other large rift basins in the western branch of the rift valley, the Lake Albert Rift is not a highly asymmetrical half-graben basin, but instead has subsided nearly symmetrically and continuously in the late Cenozoic along two extensive boundary fault systems on either side of the basin.
Seismic
sequences
from across the basin were correlated to borehole stratigraphy from a deep well drilled on the Ugandan margin. These observations suggest that the basin has experienced a long-term change from a continuously open lacustrine, possibly deep lake system in the Miocene or early Pliocene, to an alternating shallow lacustrine and fluvial system in the mid and late Pleistocene. This history of basin evolution has led to the development of a rich hydrocarbon system.
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