Sedimentary basin

A sediment basin is an elongated, circular or irregular shaped area of ​​the earth's crust, which fills up with sediment over geological time.

Geology of the sedimentary basins

The supply of sediment can be done by ocean currents, rivers and streams, or mass movements such as turbidites or landslides. The deposition of sediment occurs in part at the bottom of lakes or seas, another part comes ashore to deposit.

The lower layers are transformed by the following compressed ( compaction ) and long term sedimentary rocks such as sandstone or mudstone. With a sufficiently large reduction in the onset with increasing pressure and increasing heat metamorphosis changed the rocks, so that can arise for example from the sandstones and quartzites from the shales slate. The younger (upper) layers of gravel and other loose material often include significant reservoirs of groundwater.

Formation

The formation of sedimentary basins can be caused by quite contradictory processes:

  • Basin formation by strain
  • Basin formation by glaciers
  • Basin formation by compression and tectonic ballast
  • Basin formation by mass deficits in the underground
  • Basin formation through sedimentary ballast
  • Basin formation by lateral displacements

The slow decrease in the earth's crust under mountain systems is accompanied by the simultaneous deposition of sediments.

Deposits

In the course of the gradual lowering billion tons of remains of dead plants accumulate in the subsidence area and are successively of crushed stone, sand and clay layers covered. Where this happens the absence of air, can be formed from the organic remains of coal, oil and natural gas. The coalification of the radicals is supported by the continued decline of the sedimentary basin, continuous deposition and the rising temperature of the substrate.

Occurrence of sedimentary basins

Example of sedimentary basins in Central Europe are

  • The North German Basin. It extends from the Ruhr area until well into the North German lowlands beyond. The thickness of the basin fill diminish to the north to
  • The Ruhr, its eastward continuation of the Upper Silesian coal basin as well as the continuation westwärtige about the Aachen district, the brazier of Namur and the southern English coal belt took several thousand meters detritus of the Variscan mountain belt on
  • The Upper Rhine Graben is a grave breach and filled with over 10 km of sediment. He is today a broad plain between the Vosges and the Palatinate Forest in the west and the Black Forest and the Odenwald in the east dar.
  • The Vienna Basin has a spindle-shaped outline and is 5-8 km slumped deep between the Alps and the Carpathians
  • The Pannonian lowlands and is located in the hinterland of the Carpathians, and is up to 8.5 km deep. In Eastern Hungary in Kecskemét, dozens of volcanoes are located just below the surface. They have been slowly sunk off about 30-10 million years ago in the depth and covered with younger sediments
  • The Paris Basin is a bowl-shaped depression area in the heart of France. Sediments of Jurassic and Cretaceous have here, the basement covers, which occurs at the pool edges in the Rhenish Slate Mountains, in Brittany and the Massif Central -a-days.
  • The Aquitaine Basin is named after the Paris Basin, the second largest Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary basins of France. The 66,000 -square-mile basin is above the eroded during the Permian Variscan basement, which began gradually to sink since the Triassic.
  • In the Parentis Basin and in Subpyrenäenbecken, the basement is hidden at its lowest point under a Sedimentauflast of 11,000 meters.

Example of sedimentary basins outside of Central Europe are

  • The sedimentary basins of China as Jungar Basin, Songliao Basin, Tarim Basin, Ordos Basin, Shaan - Gan - Ning Basin, North China Basin
  • The Canningbecken in North Western Australia
  • The Amazon Basin in South America
  • The central North American basin (see Geography of the United States) and the Basin and Range province east of the Rockies
  • The Antarctic brazier

Economic and cultural significance of sedimentary basins

The great plains - of which a large part was from einsinkenden pool - are not only a good ground for settlement, agriculture and industry, but have to have a lot of natural resources. Moreover, since a large part of humanity in flat and hilly country life of basins and numerous mineral resources - mainly oil, gas and coal - are found in sedimentary basins, this one has examined most carefully and used for centuries. Even today, sedimentary basins, especially outside Europe and North America, the subject of intense commercial exploration, among other things because the Mineral Resources of the sedimentary basins in the industrialized countries have long been subject to degradation.

Typical minerals of sedimentary basins are

  • Hydrocarbons, such as oil or gas
  • Groundwater
  • Granular soil like gravel, gravel and boulders, sand, clay
  • Salt
Crust (geology) Sturzstrom Compaction (geology) Vosges Mountains Carpathian Mountains Rhenish Massif Basement (geology) Canning Basin Rift Lowland (disambiguation)
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