Caribbean Basins

This 21-chapter volume provides a regionally-comprehensive collection of original studies of Caribbean basins conducted by academic and petroleum geologists and geophysicists in the early and mid-1990s. The common tectonic events discussed in the volume including the rifting and passive margin history of North and South America that led to the formation of the Caribbean region; the entry of an exotic, Pacific-derived Great Arc of the Caribbean at the leading edge of the Caribbean oceanic plateau; the terminal collision of the arc and plateau with the passive margins fringing North and South America; and subsequent strike-slip and accretionary tectonics that affected the arc-continent collision zone. Two introductory chapters (Part A) utilize recent advances in quantitative plate tectonic modeling and satellite-based gravity measurements to place the main phases of Caribbean basin formation into a global plate tectonic framework. Nineteen subsequent chapters are organized geographically and focus on individual or groups of genetically-linked basins. Part B consists of five chapters which mainly focus on basins overlying the North America plate in the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas that record its rifting from South America in late Jurassic to Cretaceous time. Part C has six chapters that focus on smaller, usually heavily faulted and onshore Cenozoic basins of the northern Caribbean that formed in response to arc collisional and strike-slip activity along the evolving North America-Caribbean plate boundary. The two chapters in Part D focus on Cenozoic basins related to the Lesser Antilles arc system of the eastern Caribbean. Part E is comprised of three chapters on the Jurassic-Recent sedimentary basins of the eastern Venezuela and Trinidad area of the southeastern Caribbean. These basins reflect both the Jurassic-Cretaceous rifting and passive margin history of separation between the North and South America plates as well as a much younger phase of Oligocene to recent transpression between the eastward migrating Lesser Antilles arc and accretionary wedge and the South America continent. The three chapters of Part F contain deep penetration seismic reflection and other geophysical data on the largely submarine Cretaceous Caribbean oceanic plateau that forms the nucleus of the present-day Caribbean plate.

The Caribbean Basin: An International History provides a study of the entire Caribbean region, including Central America and the Caribbean coast of northern South America. It also offers analysis of: * the role of international intervention * the complex interaction among major world powers in the area * conflicts over colonial possessions and trade routes * Soviet-American confrontation in the Cold War years. Integrating the recent political, social and economic history of the Caribbean with its miltary and diplomatic past, this book charts the region's emergence from colonialism during the course of the twentieth century.

Full text e-book available as part of the Elsevier ScienceDirect Earth and Planetary Sciences subject collection.

This volume brings together 17 comprehensive, data-rich analyses to provide an updated perspective on the Mexican Gulf of Mexico, Florida and northern Caribbean. The papers span a broad range of scales and disciplines from plate tectonic evolution to sub-basin scale analysis. Papers are broadly categorised into three themes: 1) geological evolution of the basins of the southern Gulf of Mexico in Mexico, Bahamas and Florida and their hydrocarbon potential; 2) evolution of the region’s Late Cretaceous to Neogene orogens and subsequent denudation history; and 3) geological evolution of the basins and crustal elements of the northern Caribbean. This book and its extensive data sets are essential for all academic and exploration geoscientists working in this area. Two large wall maps are included as fold-outs.

What is the important geologic information recorded in Thrust Belts and Foreland Basins (TBFB) on the evolution of orogens? How do they transcript the coupled influence of deep and surficial geological processes? Is it still worth looking for hydrocarbons in foothills areas? These and other questions are addressed in the volume edited by Lacombe, Lavé, Roure and Vergés, which constitutes the Proceedings of the first meeting of the new ILP task force on "Sedimentary Basins", held in December 2005 at the Institut Français du Pétrole, on behalf of the Société Géologique de France and the Sociedad Geologica de España. This volumes spans a timely bridge between recent advances in the understanding of surface processes, field investigations, high resolution imagery, analogue-numerical modelling, and hydrocarbon exploration in TBFB. With 25 thematic papers including well-documented regional case studies, it provides a milestone publication as a new in-depth examination of TBFB.

This completely revised and enlarged second edition provides an up-to-date overview of all major topics in sedimentary geology. It is unique in its quantitative approach to denudation-accumulation systems and basin fillings, including dynamic aspects. The relationship between tectonism and basin evolution as well as the concepts of sequence cycle and event stratigraphy in various depositional environments are extensively discussed. Numerous, often composite figures, a well-structured text, brief summaries in boxes, and several examples from all continents make the book an invaluable source of information for students, researchers and professors in academia as well as for professionals in the oil industry.

"AAPG Memoir 79, The Circum-Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, is the first volume in more than a decade to document such a wide range of research on the geology of this vast area. Of the total 44 papers, roughly two-thirds pertain to the Gulf of Mexico, with an emphasis on the Mexican portion of the basin, and to the petroliferous areas of the southern Caribbean, including Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago. The remaining papers relate to the Antilles and Central America, as well as a series of papers that address region-wide topics such as plate tectonic evolution. A significant number of papers were contributed by authors from national oil companies and universities from within the region." --AAPG.