Abstract:
The stratigraphic architecture of sedimentary basin provides important constraints on the rheological structure of the upper mantle and the crust, eustatic events and tectonic movements. In this study, we examined the convective coupling between the uppermost mantle and ductile lower crust as a formation mechanism of sedimentary basins. In this mechanism, the lower crust is squeezed by the upper mantle flow associated with mantle diapiric upwelling, resulting in the surface subsidence and formation of sedimentary basin. We investigated the stratigraphic architecture by taking into account the horizontal migration of the upwelling in time and spatial domains. The sedimentary basin is characterized by both the thickness and formation period for its gross feature and the sequence stratigraphy. The decay of the upwelling causes the surface uplift, and some parts of sediments deposited during the surface subsidence are consequently eroded. The subsidence area moves as the activity of upwelling horizontally migrates, resulting in the formation of unconformity for the uplifted and eroded area over the previous upwelling. We also incorporated the effects of third order eustasy, with amplitude of ~100 m and period of ~1 Myr, into convective coupling model. An application of our model to Karatsu-Sasebo coalfield in the Tertiary of the northwest Kyushu, Japan, indicates that the stratigraphic architecture of sedimentary basin including two effects, i.e. convective coupling and eustasy, may provide important information about the viscosity structure of the lower crust and uppermost mantle and spatio-temporal growth and decay histories of the mantle diapiric upwelling. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
