Fold And Thrust Belts

The outer parts of collision mountain belts are commonly represented by fold and thrust belts. Major advances in understanding these tectonic settings have arisen from regional studies that integrate diverse geological information in quests to find and produce hydrocarbons. Drilling has provided tests of subsurface forecasts, challenging interpretation strategies and structural models. This volume contains 19 papers that illustrate a diversity of methods and approaches together with case studies from Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. Collectively they show that appreciating diversity is key for developing better interpretations of complex geological structures in the subsurface – endeavours that span applications beyond the development of hydrocarbons.

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.

K.R. McClay Department of Geology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey, England TW20 OEX. Since the first Thrust and Nappe Tectonics Conference in London in 1979 (McClay & Price 1981), and the Toulouse Meeting on Thrusting and Deformation in 1984 (Platt et al. 1986) there have been considerable advances in the study of thrust systems incorporating new field observations, conceptual models, mechanical models, analogue and numerical simulations, together with geophysical studies of thrust belts. Thrust Tectonics 1990 was an International Conference convened by the editor and held at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham Surrey, from April 4th until April 7th 1990. There were one hundred and seventy participants from all continents except South America. The conference was generously sponsored by Brasoil U.K. Limited, BP Exploration, Chevron U.K. Limited, Clyde Petroleum, Enterprise Oil, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, and Shell U.K. Exploration and Production. One hundred and five contributions were presented at the meeting, - seventy six oral presentations (together with poster displays) and an additional twenty nine posters without oral presentation (McClay 1990, conference abstract volume).

Fold-and-thrust belts occur worldwide, have formed in all eras of geological time, and are widely recognized as the most common mode in which the crust accommodates shortening. Much current research on the structure of fold-and-thrust belts is focused on structural studies of regions or individual structures and on the geometry and evolution of these regions employing kinematic, mechanical and experimental modelling. In keeping with the main trends of current research, this title is devoted to the kinematic evolution and structural styles of a number of fold-and-thrust belts formed from palaeozoic to recent times. The papers included in this book cover a broad range of different topics, from modelling approaches to predict internal deformation of single structures, 3D reconstructions to decipher the structural evolution of groups of structures, palaeomagnetic studies of portions of fold-and-thrust belts, geometrical and kinematical aspects of Coulomb thrust wedges and structural analyses of fold-and-thrust belts to unravel their sequence of deformations--

"The Umbria-Marche Apennines are entirely made of marine sedimentary rocks, representing a continuous record of the geotectonic evolution of an epeiric sea from the Early Triassic to the Pleistocene. The book includes reviews and original research works accomplished with the support of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco"--

The 19 original papers on the tectonic evolution of mountain systems were collected to mark the 50th anniversary of Price's description of the Canadian Cordillera. A sampling of topics turns up the driving mechanism and three-dimensional circulation of plate tectonics, the Belt-Purcell Basic as the keystone of the Rocky Mountain fold-and-thrust belt in the US and Canada, Silurian-Devonian orogenic events in the central Appalachians and the crystalline southern Appalachians, and defining the eastern boundary of the North Asian craton from structural and subsidence history studies of the Verkhoyansk fold-and-thrust belt. A fold-out sheet of color maps and diagrams is tucked into a pocket inside the back cover.