Lithospheric Flexure and Sedimentary Basin Evolution: the Steer’s Head Model Re-visited

Abstract:

Backstripping studies of biostratigraphic data from deep wells show that sediment loading is one of the main factors controlling the subsidence and uplift history of sedimentary basins. Previous studies based on single layer models of elastic and viscoelastic plates overlying an inviscid fluid have shown that sediment loading, together with a tectonic subsidence that decreases exponentially with time, can explain the large-scale ‘architecture’ of rift-type basins and, in some cases, details of their internal stratigraphy such as onlap and offlap patterns. One problem with these so-called ‘steer’s head’ models is that they were based on a simple rheological model in which the long-term strength of the lithosphere increased with thermal age. Recent oceanic flexure studies, however, reveal that the long-term strength of the lithosphere depends not only on thermal age, but also load age.

We have used the thermal structure based on plate cooling models, together with recent experimentally-derived flow laws, to compute the viscosity structure of the lithosphere and a new analytical model to compute the flexure of a multilayer viscoelastic plate by a trapezoid-shaped sediment load at different times since basin initiation. If we define the nondimensional number Dw = τ_m/τ_t, where τ_m is the Maxwell time constant and τ_t is the thermal time constant, we find that for Dw << 1 the flexure approximates that of an elastic plate and an onlap pattern forms at the edge of basin (Fig. 1), whereas for Dw >> 1 the flexure approximates that of a viscoelastic plate and an offlap pattern develops (Fig. 2). Interestingly Dw ~ 1 produces a basin in which onlap dominates its early evolution while offlap dominates its later evolution and an unconformity separates the two different stratal patterns (Fig. 3). Therefore, when consideration is given to the fact that the long-term strength of the lithosphere depends on both thermal and load age we are able to produce stratal geometries that not only closely resemble stratigraphic observations, but do not require either long-term sea-level or sediment flux changes in order to explain them.