Prolonged dynamic support from the Icelandic plume of the NE Atlantic margin

Jonathon P. A. Hardman, Nick Schofield, David W. Jolley, Simon P. Holford, Adrian J. Hartley, Stephen Morse, John Underhill, Douglas A. Watson, Eva H. Zimmer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Sedimentary basins affected by hotspots often contain records of uplift and subsidence within coeval stratigraphic successions. The subsidence history can contain measureable perturbations in ancient palaeogeographies that can help constrain the duration of dynamic support. ~56 Ma the North East Atlantic experienced uplift related to the Iceland mantle plume. Within the Faroe-Shetland Basin, we document the stratigraphic record of subsidence following plume uplift, through integration of regional seismic datasets and well data. Subsidence following plume uplift is recorded by mapping the southward migration of palaeocoastlines throughout the early Eocene of the Faroe-Shetland Basin. We find that after initial uplift over 0.5 Ma, subsidence was inhibited for 0.45 Ma. Coeval with initiation of rifting in the North Atlantic, at 54.9 Ma, a ~0.9 Ma period of accelerated subsidence occurred, recorded by migration of the coastline by ~80 km inland. We attribute these events to a prolonged period (2 Ma) of dynamic support from the Iceland plume terminated by rapid loss of dynamic support coeval with rifting in the Northeast Atlantic, 54.9 Ma. Our results suggest that palaeogeographical analysis is a powerful tool in constraining the duration of dynamic support in basins affected by mantle plumes.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)396-410
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of the Geological Society
Volume175
Issue number3
Early online date17 Jan 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2018

Bibliographical note

The work in this paper contains work conducted during a PhD study undertaken as part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil & Gas [grant number NE/M00578X/1] and is fully funded by NERC whose support is gratefully acknowledged. PGS and TGS are thanked for provision of seismic data. Interpretation was conducted on Schlumberger Petrel Software and Spectral Decomposition on FFA’s Geoteric Software. R. Parnell-Turner and J. Armitage are thanked for constructive and helpful reviews that improved the paper. The editor P. Clift is thanked for excellent editorial guidance and encouragement.

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