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Foreland Basin
A foreland basin is a structural basin that develops adjacent and parallel to a mountain belt. Foreland basins form because the immense mass created by crustal thickening associated with the evolution of a mountain belt causes the lithosphere to bend, by a process known as lithospheric flexure. The width and depth of the foreland basin is determined by the flexural rigidity of the underlying lithosphere, and the characteristics of the mountain belt. The foreland basin receives sediment that is eroded off the adjacent mountain belt, filling with thick sedimentary successions that thin away from the mountain belt. Foreland basins represent an endmember basin type, the other being rift basins. Space for sediments (accommodation space) is provided by loading and downflexure to form foreland basins, in contrast to rift basins, where accommodation space is generated by lithospheric extension. Types of foreland basin Foreland basins can be divided into two categories: * Peri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Source Rock
In petroleum geology, source rock is rock which has generated hydrocarbons or which could generate hydrocarbons. Source rocks are one of the necessary elements of a working petroleum system. They are organic-rich sediments that may have been deposited in a variety of environments including deep water marine, lacustrine and deltaic. Oil shale can be regarded as an organic-rich but immature source rock from which little or no oil has been generated and expelled. Subsurface source rock mapping methodologies make it possible to identify likely zones of petroleum occurrence in sedimentary basins as well as shale gas plays. Types of source rocks Source rocks are classified from the types of kerogen that they contain, which in turn governs the type of hydrocarbons that will be generated: * Type I source rocks are formed from algal remains deposited under anoxic conditions in deep lakes: they tend to generate waxy crude oils when submitted to thermal stress during deep burial. * Type ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cementation (geology)
Cementation involves ions carried in groundwater chemically precipitating to form new crystalline material between sedimentary grains. The new pore-filling minerals forms "bridges" between original sediment grains, thereby binding them together. In this way, ''sand'' becomes sandstone, and ''gravel'' becomes conglomerate or breccia. Cementation occurs as part of the diagenesis or lithification of sediments. Cementation occurs primarily below the water table regardless of sedimentary grain sizes present. Large volumes of pore water must pass through sediment pores for new mineral cements to crystallize and so millions of years are generally required to complete the cementation process. Common mineral cements include calcite, quartz, and silica phases like cristobalite, iron oxides, and clay minerals; other mineral cements also occur. Cementation is continuous in the groundwater zone, so much so that the term "zone of cementation" is sometimes used interchangeably. Cementa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compaction (geology)
In sedimentology, compaction is the process by which a sediment progressively loses its porosity due to the effects of pressure from loading. This forms part of the process of lithification. When a layer of sediment is originally deposited, it contains an open framework of particles with the pore space being usually filled with water. As more sediment is deposited above the layer, the effect of the increased loading is to increase the particle-to-particle stresses resulting in porosity reduction primarily through a more efficient packing of the particles and to a lesser extent through elastic compression and pressure solution. The initial porosity of a sediment depends on its lithology. Mudstones start with porosities of >60%, sandstones typically ~40% and carbonates sometimes as high as 70%. Results from hydrocarbon exploration wells show clear porosity reduction trends with depth. Compaction trend estimation and decompaction process are useful for analyzing numerical basin evol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heat Flow
Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, thermal convection, thermal radiation, and transfer of energy by phase changes. Engineers also consider the transfer of mass of differing chemical species (mass transfer in the form of advection), either cold or hot, to achieve heat transfer. While these mechanisms have distinct characteristics, they often occur simultaneously in the same system. Heat conduction, also called diffusion, is the direct microscopic exchanges of kinetic energy of particles (such as molecules) or quasiparticles (such as lattice waves) through the boundary between two systems. When an object is at a different temperature from another body or its surroundings, heat flows so that the body and the surroundings reach the same temperature, at which point they are in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geothermal Gradient
Geothermal gradient is the rate of temperature change with respect to increasing depth in Earth's interior. As a general rule, the crust temperature rises with depth due to the heat flow from the much hotter mantle; away from tectonic plate boundaries, temperature rises in about 25–30 °C/km (72–87 °F/mi) of depth near the surface in most of the world. However, in some cases the temperature may drop with increasing depth, especially near the surface, a phenomenon known as ''inverse'' or ''negative'' geothermal gradient. The effects of weather, sun, and season only reach a depth of approximately 10-20 metres. Strictly speaking, ''geo''-thermal necessarily refers to Earth but the concept may be applied to other planets. In SI units, the geothermal gradient is expressed as °C/km, K/km, or mK/m. These are all equivalent. Earth's internal heat comes from a combination of residual heat from planetary accretion, heat produced through radioactive decay, latent heat f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rheology
Rheology (; ) is the study of the flow of matter, primarily in a fluid (liquid or gas) state, but also as "soft solids" or solids under conditions in which they respond with Plasticity (physics), plastic flow rather than deforming Elasticity (physics), elastically in response to an applied force. Rheology is a branch of physics, and it is the science that deals with the Deformation (physics), deformation and flow of materials, both solids and liquids.W. R. Schowalter (1978) Mechanics of Non-Newtonian Fluids Pergamon The term ''wikt:rheology, rheology'' was coined by Eugene C. Bingham, a professor at Lafayette College, in 1920, from a suggestion by a colleague, Markus Reiner.The Deborah Number The term was inspired by the aphorism of Heraclitus (often mistakenly attributed to Simplicius of Cilicia, Simplicius), (, 'everything flows' [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viscoelastic Lithospheric Flexure
In materials science and continuum mechanics, viscoelasticity is the property of materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. Viscous materials, like water, resist shear flow and strain linearly with time when a stress is applied. Elastic materials strain when stretched and immediately return to their original state once the stress is removed. Viscoelastic materials have elements of both of these properties and, as such, exhibit time-dependent strain. Whereas elasticity is usually the result of bond stretching along crystallographic planes in an ordered solid, viscosity is the result of the diffusion of atoms or molecules inside an amorphous material.Meyers and Chawla (1999): "Mechanical Behavior of Materials", 98-103. Background In the nineteenth century, physicists such as Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Kelvin researched and experimented with creep and recovery of glasses, metals, and rubbers. Viscoelasticity was further examined in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molasse
__NOTOC__ The term "molasse" () refers to sandstones, shales and conglomerates that form as terrestrial or shallow marine deposits in front of rising mountain chains. The molasse deposits accumulate in a foreland basin, especially on top of flysch-like deposits, for example, those that left from the rising Alps, or erosion in the Himalaya. These deposits are typically the non-marine alluvial and fluvial sediments of lowlands, as compared to deep-water flysch sediments. Sedimentation stops when the orogeny stops, or when the mountains have eroded flat. Stanley, Steven M., ''Earth System History'', New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1999, p.243 The molasse can sometimes completely fill a foreland basin, creating a nearly flat depositional surface, that nonetheless remains a structural syncline. Molasse can be very thick near the mountain front, but usually thins out towards the interior of a craton; such massive, convex accumulations of sediment are known as ''clastic wedge In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clastic
Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks by physical weathering.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-5 Geologists use the term clastic to refer to sedimentary rocks and particles in sediment transport, whether in suspension or as bed load, and in sediment deposits. Sedimentary clastic rocks Clastic sedimentary rocks are rocks composed predominantly of broken pieces or ''clasts'' of older weathered and eroded rocks. Clastic sediments or sedimentary rocks are classified based on grain size, clast and cementing material (matrix) composition, and texture. The classification factors are often useful in determining a sample's environment of deposition. An example of clastic environment would be a river system in which the full range of grains being transported ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flysch
Flysch () is a sequence of sedimentary rock layers that progress from deep-water and turbidity flow deposits to shallow-water shales and sandstones. It is deposited when a deep basin forms rapidly on the continental side of a mountain building episode. Examples are found near the North American Cordillera, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Carpathians. Sedimentological properties Flysch consists of repeated sedimentary cycles with upwards fining of the sediments. There are sometimes coarse conglomerates or breccias at the bottom of each cycle, which gradually evolve upwards into sandstone and shale/mudstone. Flysch typically consists of a sequence of shales rhythmically interbedded with thin, hard, graywacke-like sandstones. Typically the shales do not contain many fossils, while the coarser sandstones often have fractions of micas and glauconite. Tectonics In a continental collision, a subducting tectonic plate pushes on the plate above it, making the rock fold, often to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
