Abstract: Integrated Use of Remotely Sensed Imagery and Other Data Sets to Infer the Tectonics, Structural Style, and Hydrocarbon Habitats of the Basins of the Tien Shan Orogenic Belt, Western China: A Case Study
John L. Berry, Takashi Nishidai
Remotely sensed imagery and various other published regional data sets (gravity, magnetics, earthquake data) were integrated in order to interpret the structural style, both at deep crustal levels and at the relatively shallow levels of interest to explorationists, of the Tien Shan. Cross-sections through the range were systematically prepared, and then palinspastically restored, constrained by the remote sensing interpretation, potential fields data, and published microplate movement vectors.
Since large portions of the area are covered by late Tertiary orogenic sediments, the resulting interpretation focused on these areas, and what and how much geology lies concealed beneath them.
We were able to demonstrate the likely consumption in the late Tertiary of over 100 km of Tarim Basin west along a broad front south of the Tien Shan, as well as within the Kuruktag area, where basins are compressional rather than extensional. There are also local areas of extension within the orogenic zone, and these can be explained using the known microplate boundaries, backward extrapolation of present microplate motions, and the type and extent of late Tertiary deformation within the plates as constraints. Relative and absolute microplate motions have to change greatly through Tertiary time in order to comply with these constraints.
The results of this work allow one to infer the affinities, and hence something of the hydrocarbon potential, of fragmentary plates by reconstructing their motions. They also allow one to infer the nature of the stratigraphy, the likely depth of burial, and something of the maturation history of pre-Tertiary rocks buried by Tertiary sediments deposited in both compressional and extensional regimes.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90951©1996 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Caracas, Venezuela