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Chapter 1
The truth is that whoever touches this enticing subject...is bound to indulge freely in speculation. The problem
is so broad, the factors involved are so numerous, and the
work to be done with regard to salt structures is so great
that we cannot...[restrict our speculation to the narrow]
limits of exact knowledge.
Everett DeGolyer, 1925
Although this is no place in which to describe the adventures of a petroleum geologist it may, perhaps, be said that
the carrying out of the geological work referred to was greatly hampered owing to much of the time being spent as a
prisoner in the hands of Italian, Turk and Arab.
Arthur Wade, mapping salt domes,
Red Sea coast of Arabia, 1912
Abstract
The conceptual breakthroughs in understanding salt tectonics can be recognized by reviewing the history of
salt tectonics, which divides naturally into three parts: the pioneering era, the fluid era, and the brittle era.
The pioneering era (18561933) featured the search for a general hypothesis of salt diapirism, initially dominated by bizarre, erroneous notions of igneous activity, residual islands, in situ crystallization, osmotic pressures,
and expansive crystallization. Gradually data from oil exploration constrained speculation. The effects of buoyancy versus orogeny were debated, contact relations were characterized, salt glaciers were discovered, and the
concepts of downbuilding and differential loading were proposed as diapiric mechanisms.
The fluid era (1933~1989) was dominated by the view that salt tectonics resulted from Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in which a dense fluid overburden having negligible yield strength sinks into a less dense fluid salt layer,
displacing it upward. Density contrasts, viscosity contrasts, and dominant wavelengths were emphasized,
whereas strength and faulting of the overburden were ignored. During this era, palinspastic reconstructions
were attempted; salt upwelling below thin overburdens was recognized; internal structures of mined diapirs
were discovered; peripheral sinks, turtle structures, and diapir families were comprehended; flow laws for dry
salt were formulated; and contractional belts on divergent margins and allochthonous salt sheets were recognized. The 1970s revealed the basic driving force of salt allochthons, intrasalt minibasins, finite strains in diapirs,
the possibility of thermal convection in salt, direct measurement of salt glacial flow stimulated by rainfall, and
the internal structure of convecting evaporites and salt glaciers. The 1980s revealed salt rollers, subtle traps, flow
laws for damp salt, salt canopies, and mushroom diapirs. Modeling explored effects of regional stresses on
domal faults, spoke circulation, and combined Rayleigh-Taylor instability and thermal convection. By this time,
the awesome implications of increased reservoirs below allochthonous salt sheets had stimulated a renaissance
in salt tectonic research.
Blossoming about 1989, the brittle era is actually rooted in the 1947 discovery that a diapir stops rising if its
roof becomes too thick. Such a notion was heretical in the fluid era. Stimulated by sandbox experiments and
computerized reconstructions of Gulf Coast diapirs and surrounding faults, the onset of the brittle era yielded
regional detachments and evacuation surfaces (salt welds and fault welds) along vanished salt allochthons, raft
tectonics, shallow spreading, and segmentation of salt sheets. The early 1990s revealed rules of section balancing for salt tectonics, salt flats and salt ramps, reactive piercement as a diapiric initiator resulting from tectonic
differential loading, cryptic thin-skinned extension, influence of sedimentation rate on the geometry of passive
diapirs and extrusions, the importance of critical overburden thickness to the viability of active diapirs, faultsegmented sheets, counter-regional fault systems, subsiding diapirs, extensional turtle structure anticlines, and
mock turtle structures.
Jackson
PREAMBLE
Figure 1The first salt diapir described in the geologic literature (Ville, 1856). The panorama shows the southern contact of
the 100-m-high Ran el Melah (Rocher de Sel de Djelfa), a 1.4-km-wide plug of Triassic salt in the northern fringe of the
Saharan Atlas range, Algeria. The diapirs contact is marked by the white line. North of the diapir (not shown) is the
megabreccia residue of a wasted salt glacier.
Unconstrained Speculation
Geologic understanding was first hindered, then driven, by economics. Before abundant hydrocarbons were
known to be associated with salt domes, fragmentary
knowledge about them came entirely from rare, fortuitous exposures. Because of this dearth of data, speculation ran wild and no hypothesis was too bizarre to omit.
As is always the case when exact information is too
scarce to limit imagination seriously, widely different theories of origin were promulgated. Because the chief test
for excellence in theory is that it shall not violate known
fact, it is not surprising that a wide variety of theories
should have been put forward (DeGolyer, 1925, p. 835).
Working on an edifice built by a century of intensive
research on salt tectonics, it is easy for us today to dismiss
many of these hypotheses, which were necessarily based
on slender evidence. However, field data were scarce,
hard won, and frequently dangerous to collect, as exemplified by the opening quote from Wade (1931).
Jackson
Buoyancy
Lachmann (1910) originated the buoyancy hypothesis
for salt diapirism, but he lacked any physical explanation
of the process. Arrhenius (1913) took up this challenge
and inferred the effects of gravity under conditions of
density inversion. Salt was driven upward like a rising
oil drop by the sinking of a denser fluid overburden.
Arrhenius ascribed the folds observed within diapirs to
differential collapse of solution cavities in the salt. Stille
(1925) felt that the buoyancy hypothesis implied that salt
stocks in general would have to be surrounded by soft,
wet clay or ground water. Nevertheless, in two series of
exemplary experiments based on earlier ones by Torrey
and Fralich (1926), Escher and Kuenen (1929) were able
to reproduce all known shapes and attitudes of folds in
German salt domes by pressure forcing a viscous stratified sequence up through a circular opening in a rigid
overburden. The realism of their models convinced them
to favor the gravity-driven hypothesis, although they
could not exclude regional shortening as an agent. By
this time, torsion balance surveys had revealed gravity
minima over many salt domes in the Gulf Coast
(Nettleton, 1955), which were compatible with the
inferred low density of salt.
Regional Contraction
In Romania, where diapirs formed the discordant
intrusive cores of antiforms in a foldbelt, a tectonic origin
was compelling. The same was found to be true in Spain
and Morocco, where excellent exposures enabled
Yovanovitch (1922) to construct a cross section through
the Rif nappes that contained virtually all the elements of
contractional salt tectonics known today (Figure 3) (compare with Cobbold et al., 1995; Harrison, 1995; Letouzey
et al., 1995; Sans and Vergs, 1995, all in this volume).
Even in Germany, enough regional deformation was present to ensure that prevailing hypotheses on salt structures were dominated by a tectonic engine. Stille (1910,
1925) advocated orogenic shortening as the cause of salt
folding and upwelling in Saxony. Stille (1917) identified a
characteristic style of folds decoupling over Permian
Zechstein salt in northern Saxony, having tight antiforms
separated by broad, flat-bottomed synforms (Figure 4).
This ejective style contrasted with the dejective fold style
farther south, in which tight synforms were separated by
broad, flat-topped antiforms.
Stilles (1925) signal contribution was to emphasize
that German salt structures formed a broad spectrum of
structures intermediate between two end-members: (1)
the salt-cored anticline produced by orogenic folding of a
sequence underlain by salt and (2) the salt stock. Such a
continuity implied to him a common origin (although
this could also be interpreted as the varying dominance of
two different processes, such as gravity and orogeny).
During episodic contraction, salt stocks were upthrust
into faulted rather than folded overburden in a style
intermediate between folding and igneous intrusion
Figure 3Yovanovitchs (1922) astonishingly perceptive cross section in the Rif nappes of Alpine age in Morocco shows
almost all the important characteristics of contractional salt tectonics: inclined and squeezed walls of Triassic salt, diapiric
fold cores, thin smears of salt in the hanging walls of imbricated thrust nappes, narrow antiforms separated by broad flatbottomed synforms, and diminution of shortening away from the hinterland. The 10 vertically exaggerated section trends
west-southwest from Ouezzane.
Figure 4Stille (1917) identifies the characteristic geometries of Saxon folds decoupling over Permian
Zechstein salt: (a) ejective style of narrow antiforms and
broad, flat-bottomed synforms; (b) a kongruente style
intermediate between the two end-members; and (c)
dejective style of narrow synforms and broad, flat-topped
antiforms.
(Figure 5). Noting that the salt was much more deformed
than the surrounding strata, he accurately ascribed this
difference to the uncommonly mobile salt. In accord
with modern views, Stille (1925) regarded the salts high
mobility as more significant than its low density. Indeed,
Lohest (1921) had already physically modeled similar
decoupling of realistic folds and thrusts over a lubricating
layer of grease. Timing seemed to support Stilles hypothesis. Generally the rise of salt structures seemed to correlate with known episodes of Saxon folding. DeGolyer
(1925) also favored the idea of lateral stresses causing the
rise of salt domes, but because of the lack of observed
regional folding in the Gulf Coast, he had to infer preCretaceous, probably Paleozoic, orogenic emplacement
of the salt domes.
Stille (1925) was one of the first to recognize the existence of diapiric stems, vertically pinched-off diapirs, and
laterally pinched-off source layers (Figure 5). Stilles orogenic engine fell out of favor from the 1930s onward, but
recent (1990s) ideas on the role of inversion in the deformation of Zechstein salt in northwestern Europe suggest
that some salt structures may have been initiated or modified along the lines of Stilles hypothesis (Coward and
Stewart, 1995).
Jackson
Downbuilding
Until the early 1930s, the consensus was that salt
diapirs rise discordantly, piercing thick, previously
deposited piles of sedimentary rock. This penetration
requires upward displacement or stoping of a huge volume of country rock. In modern parlance, such diapirs
have a severe room problem. Wade (1931) was skeptical
Figure 7G. M. Lees field sketch of Kuh-e-Anguru salt plug, Iran, visited in the early 1920s. Along with an accompanying
photograph (not shown) of Kuh-e-Namak (Dashti), this was the first illustration of an identified salt glacier (De Bckh et al.,
1929). The glacier overflows CretaceousOligocene carbonates; two Eocene inliers (c) project through the flow.
Figure 8Sedimentary differential loading demonstrated by a model of a subaqueous delta of sand, which results in the
squeezing of a mobile substratum of laminated clay from beneath A to B (abridged from Rettger, 1935).
Jackson
Palinspastic Restorations
Exactly when the first palinspastic reconstruction was
published is uncertain. An early example of a detailed
restoration is by Rios (1948) (Figure 11). He graphically
removed the contractional overprint of Alpine orogeny to
reveal the Oligocene form of a basin floored by Triassic
Keuper evaporites. His restoration shows how the deepest part of the original basin became the most uplifted
part during subsequent regional contractiona process
termed inversion since 1978 (Coward and Stewart, 1995;
Letouzey et al., 1995).
Figure 10Dawn of the fluid era. Nettletons (1934) gravitational overturn of a fluid-fluid system initially comprising
corn syrup (white) overlying less dense crude oil (black)
(abridged from Nettleton, 1934).
Peripheral Sinks
Elements of Stilles (1925) idea of salt tectonics driven
by orogeny still lingered in Germany in the 1950s. For
example, Richter-Bernburg and Schott (1959) interpreted
vortex structures within the salt as indicating the sudden
release of compressional forces during eruptive emplacement of salt intrusions during orogenic phases.
At the same time, this orogenic linkage was being
eclipsed by methodical interpretations of seismic data
from the rejuvenated exploration of oil and gas in
Germany. Trusheim (1957, 1960) saw most German salt
structures as resulting from autonomous, isostatic rise of
salt, which he termed halokinesis. This idea was old, but
his technique of analysis was novel. His was the first sys-
Figure 11An early example of detailed palinspastic restoration of salt tectonics in the Pyrenees, without vertical exaggeration (redrawn from Rios, 1948). A basin floored by Triassic Keuper evaporites (bottom) became inverted during Alpine
contraction (top). Another interpretation might show the diapir growing passively throughout the Cretaceous, periodically
extruding to form the lateral flanges depicted, and more normal faults in the restored section because of null points along
the faults in the upper section.
Trusheim (1960) also recognized that extensional structures could be overprinted by contractional structures,
which he attributed to collapse of salt structures. Today,
basement-involved inversion would be a more popular
explanation of the contractional reactivation.
10
Jackson
Figure 12The sedimentary record begins to be systematically deciphered by Trusheim (1960). A flat-lying sequence containing Permian Zechstein salt (bottom) evolves into a pillow surrounded by primary peripheral sinks (Dogger time), then
into a diapir and adjoining secondary peripheral sinks (top of Lower Cretaceous), and finally into a postdiapir stage overlain by Tertiary peripheral sinks (top). Adjoining turtle structure anticlines are formed as the flanks of the primary sink subside over the flanks of the deflating pillow.
11
glaciers in Iran were obviously still flowing at presentday surface temperatures (Kent, 1958, 1966). Also, seismic
data (Figure 13) indicated early upwelling and flow of
salt at shallow depths. In the Gulf Coast interior basins,
salt flowed under overburdens ~350 m thick (Rosenkrans
and Marr, 1967; Hughes, 1968) and in the North Sea Basin
below overburdens ~610 m thick (Brunstrom and
Walmsley, 1969). This evidence took the form of onlaps,
truncations, and lateral thickness changes against dome
flanks; reefs were predicted and discovered on dome
crests.
Salt Nappe
By the late 1960s, two distinct concepts in salt tectonics
were well established but perceived to be unrelated. First,
the fold and thrust belts in Europe, North Africa, and
Iran, for example, were known to have involved large tectonic translations over evaporites. Second, allochthonous
salt masses were known to exist (e.g., Lotze, 1934) but
were generally referred to as overhangs or buried
extrusions and regarded as merely local anomalies in a
world of vertical salt diapirism.
In 1969, these concepts began to be linked. The horizontal component of salt tectonics was brought to the
foreground for the first time with new data from the
Sigsbee Scarpa lobate, arcuate scarp separating the continental rise from the continental slope of the northern
Gulf of Mexico. The scarp was first interpreted by Ewing
and Antoine (1966) as a deformation front: salt welled up
vertically at the base of the continental slope because of
basinward flow of salt confined within the autochthonous layer. Loading by landward sediments caused this
flow, and continued episodes of loading caused new salt
walls to rise seaward of older ones.
After Ewing and Antoine (1966), increasingly daring
concepts evolved to explain the scarps origin. Amery
(1969) first glimpsed salts underworld by identifying an
allochthonous salt tongue below the Sigsbee scarp
(Figure 14). The salt itself was dimly imaged and recognized mainly as a high-velocity anomaly, which pulled
12
Jackson
13
Figure 15Sedimentary differential loading as the driving mechanism for the allochthonous Sigsbee salt nappe, Gulf of
Mexico (from Humphris, 1978).
Nearly 50 years after direct measurement of salt glaciers was suggested by Bailey (1931), Talbot and Rogers
(1980) finally established a rate of glacial flow by repeatedly surveying markers painted on the northern glacier
of Kuh-e-Namak (Dashti, Iran). Their monitoring program was aborted by the Iranian revolution. However,
incomplete data indicated that in the dry season the glacier oscillated back and forth diurnally as it heated and
cooled. Conversely, during brief periods after rainfall,
the glacier flowed downhill as much as 0.5 m per day.
This gain was later slightly reduced as the glacier (or
namakier) dried and shrank.
Talbot and Jarvis (1984) meticulously investigated the
salt budget of the Kuh-e-Namak extrusive dome and calculated that it approximated a 1-km-high, parabolic viscous fountain rising at almost 17 cm/year and spreading
extrusively under its own weight at a rate of 2 m/year.
These rates were some 40 to 80 times faster than existing
estimates for the rise of salt domes and suggested that
water had a marked softening effect that enhanced the
flow of salt. This evidence of rapid flow would prove to
be especially significant to the origin of allochthonous salt
sheets.
14
Jackson
Salt Rollers
In the 1980s, extensional salt tectonics began to be
revealed in more detail. For about three previous decades
(e.g., Quarles, 1953), the lower footwalls of some normal
faults were known to comprise ridges of mobile salt or
shale. These diapiric ridges were thought to have initiated the faults above them. However, these diapirs
remained unnamed until Bally (1981) featured seismic
illustrations of them, labeled salt rollers; he did not
comment on the origin of the term, which remains
obscure. Salt rollers are low-amplitude, asymmetric salt
structures comprising two flanks: one flank in conformable stratigraphic contact with the overburden and
the other in normal-faulted contact with the overburden.
Salt rollers are now thought to form entirely by regional
extension, typically thin skinned and gravity driven. (In
this review, regional deformation denotes a scale larger
than a single diapir, regardless of whether the basement
is involved.)
Subtle Traps
Salt domes had long been known to create structural
traps over their crests and against their flanks. By the late
1960s, structural traps were well-established targets and
Mushroom Diapirs
The term mushroom-shaped has long been loosely
applied to diapirs shaped like light bulbs, despite the fact
that actual mushrooms are not shaped like bulbs. Truly
mushroom-shaped diapirs have a bulb fringed by one or
more pendant peripheral lobes. These lobes are common-
15
ly contained entirely within the diapir (internal mushroom), but in rare cases may enclose infolded country
rock (external mushroom). Mushroom diapirs were first
numerically modeled in two dimensions by Daly (1967).
By the 1980s, mushroom diapirs had been physically
modeled in three dimensions (Jackson and Talbot, 1989a)
and found to be identifiable by crescentic folds in horizontal section and by downward-facing folds in vertical
section. These features were recognized in at least 24
external mushroom diapirs of the Great Kavir in central
Iran (Jackson and Talbot, 1989a; Jackson et al., 1990). In a
minority of these external mushroom domes, the peripheral flanges rolled inward and upward to form vortex
structures. Mining data from several German diapirs
were also reinterpreted to indicate internal mushroom
and vortex structures (Jackson and Talbot, 1989a).
Salt Canopies
Laterally spreading salt sheets have the potential to
eventually coalesce with their neighbors. Curiously,
though, such structures were not described or even predicted until the 1980s. Correa Perez and Gutierrez y
Acosta (1983) referred to a laterally intrusive sheet of salt
coalesced from two feeders in the Salina Basin of coastal
Mexico (Figure 17a). They speculated that the allochthonous salt could be continuous throughout a wider area
offshore. In the Great Kavir of central Iran, an exposed,
coalesced cluster of 12 salt domes was independently
mapped and described as a salt canopy (Figure 17b)
(Jackson and Cornelius, 1985; Jackson et al., 1987, 1990;
Jackson and Talbot, 1989b). A cellular structure resulting
Rayleigh-Taylor Acme
The fluid era initiated by Nettleton (1934) drew to a
close in the late 1980s even as modeling of RayleighTaylor instability (sinking of denser fluid into less dense
fluid) reached new heights of sophistication.
Two topics were investigated by finite-element modeling in two dimensions. Schmeling (1987) systematically
investigated how the final wavelength and geometry of
fluid upwellings could be influenced by initial irregularities in the interface between the overturning fluids.
Earlier modelers tended to unquestioningly assume that
the spacing of diapirs could be predicted solely from viscosities, thicknesses, densities, and boundary conditions.
Schmeling showed that the final wavelength could be up
to four times larger than predicted, depending on the
spacing of the initial irregularities. Schmeling (1988)
investigated the overturn of fluids whose densities differed owing to both composition and temperature.
Various combinations of fluids and temperatures could
stabilize after a single overturn, or repeatedly overturn in
the same directions, or even repeatedly overturn in
reversed directions each time.
Talbot et al. (1991) investigated the three-dimensional
patterns of Rayleigh-Taylor overturn in detail. Combin-
16
Jackson
The modeling approach of using dry sand over a viscous fluid was revitalized by using paraffin wax or silicone to simulate salt (McGill and Stromquist, 1979;
Vendeville et al., 1987; Vendeville and Cobbold, 1987, 1988;
Vendeville, 1988, 1989; Cobbold et al., 1989). This modeling focused on extension over a salt substratum and
produced a far more realistic range of salt structures
than previously accomplished (Figure 18). Vendeville and
Cobbold (1988) discovered that a wide range of structural
styles could result simply from varying the aggradation
rate. Salt rollers were shown to be the response of salt flow
to extension rather than the cause of the extension above
them. Vendeville (1988) also demonstrated how monoclinal flexure of a salt-based sequence above a basement normal fault formed a graben in the overburden some distance away from the basement fault.
Computerized Reconstruction
A contrasting impetus for the brittle era was the introduction of computerized palinspastic reconstructions and
section balancing to salt tectonics. Although balanced section construction did not originate in the eastern
Canadian Rockies, it was first widely applied there
(Douglas, 1950; Bally et al., 1966). This provenance ensured that, as the technique propagated in the 1970s and
1980s, it remained rooted in the contractional style of fold
and thrust belts. Then Gibbs (1983) adapted the conventions of balancing to extensional terranes, and Worrall
and Snelson (1989) adapted them to salt tectonics (Figure
19). Their structural reconstructions in the Gulf of Mexico
were accurately carried out using proprietary software
and depth-converted seismic data without vertical exaggeration. Strata could be progressively decompacted,
backstripped, unfolded, and unfaulted. The widths of
gaps and overlaps between fault blocks rigorously constrained the restoration.
Worrall and Snelsons (1989) restorations indicated the
following: (1) emplacement of many restored domes was
accompanied by faulting; (2) downbuilding was a dominant mechanism of dome growth; and (3) broad, flattopped salt structures were covered by thin, bathyal shale
veneers that during progressive subsidence and steepening became shale sheaths over the progressively narrowing, subsiding passive domes.
Hossack and McGuinness (1990) highlighted important ambiguities in section balancing that are peculiar to
salt tectonics. Both extension and salt withdrawal are
capable of lowering overburden strata below their regional elevation. Thus, accommodation space for new sediments can be created either by extension or by salt withdrawal. Because of this ambiguity, distinguishing extension from withdrawal is nontrivial in section balancing.
An analogous ambiguity results because both contraction
and some types of salt emplacement raise overlying strata
above their regional elevation (Hossack, 1995).
Contraction in the deep-water foldbelts was accurately estimated to be much less than updip extension of
equivalent age. This discrepancy suggested a role for dis-
17
Figure 18Dawn of the brittle era. Several structural styles were simulated during gravity gliding experiments by variable
sedimentation rates of dry sand overburdens and silicone source layers by Vendeville and Cobbold (1987).
18
Jackson
Figure 19Another catalyst for the brittle era. The first computerized restorations in salt tectonics, as applied to the Wanda
and Corsair fault systems in the northern Gulf of Mexico (from Worrall and Snelson, 1989).
by widening grabens or half-grabens. These fault-bounded depocenters rapidly filled with younger sediments.
Some of the rafts were thought to have been originally
separated by diapiric salt walls. The walls subsided
below deepening depocenters until only remnants were
left (Figure 21, top). Burollet also mentioned a salt scar
(cicatrice salifre). This was a residual smear of salt left by
diapiric subsidence. The scar formed along the subvertical boundary between a gliding block and the adjoining
fault-bounded depocenter.
Such smears of salt began to be recognized elsewhere.
Worrall and Snelson (1989) noted salt evacuation surfaces in the Gulf of Mexico. Jackson and Cramez (1989)
19
20
Jackson
Kuh-e-Namak salt extrusion, which clearly implied submarine extrusion. The mechanics of submarine salt glaciers is investigated in detail by Fletcher et al. (1995), now
the ruling hypothesis for emplacement of salt sheets.
21
Figure 23Onlap of frontal reflectors above a thin roof averaging only 100 m thick (black bars on left) was the principal
evidence of shallow emplacement of allochthonous salt tongues (after Nelson, 1991).
22
Jackson
POSTSCRIPT
The Hedberg conference that led to this book was convened to disseminate, evaluate, and consolidate the many
new ideas in salt tectonics that were circulating in the
early 1990s. The conference was fortuitously held on the
eve of a spectacular renaissance of industry interest in salt
tectonics caused by a burgeoning subsalt play in the Gulf
of Mexico. Amid the dust raised by this exploration boom
and by the new, only partially tested ideas of the last few
years, it is a reviewers exacting task to distinguish wheat
from chaff long before these become sifted naturally.
Added to the difficulty of recognizing the durability and
quality of a new concept is the inherent bias of an active
researcher compared with a detached observer.
At present, the fluid era and the brittle era are glaringly contrasted in black-and-white opposites: fluid versus
brittle, density versus strength, gravity forces versus lateral forces, and so on. This counterpoint is typical of any
early period, when a new (brittle) paradigm is pushed to
its limits to explore its implications. Useful pieces from
the previous (fluid) paradigm may lie discarded, like
Stilles orogenic engine, which rusted for decades and
was then refurbished with the recognition of inversionrelated salt tectonics.
It is premature for the brittle era to be viewed in full
perspective, but some brief reflections on shades of gray
in two aspects of salt tectonics soften strong contrasts and
should check any overweening confidence that we fully
understand how salt tectonics works.
In theory, a supercomputer groaning under the weight
of appropriate algorithms and incorporating a realistically large number of variables could simulate a full range of
salt tectonics by forward modeling. Although such a simulation is valid and could be repeatedly calibrated against
natural structures, it could never actually verify the
hypotheses built into the algorithms (Oreskes et al., 1994).
Moreover, such a model cannot be built by even the most
brilliant minds because we lack full data to be entered.
Most lacking may be data on how overburden deforms.
On geologic time scales, salt is a Newtonian viscous or
power law fluid, whereas shale seems to deform by pervasive brittle shear. Yet both diapiric rock types can yield
similar structural stylesapparently because they share a
common overburden. The style of tectonics seems to be
controlled by the overburden rather than by the composition of the diapiric rock.
23
What do we know of this overburden? Current modeling of salt tectonics is dominated by an isotropic overburden deforming as a brittle but previously broken rock,
governed by Byerlees law (e.g., Byerlee, 1978). This prefractured state is popular among modelers because its
behavior is well understood and is robustly uniform for a
large range of rocks (excluding shale). Moreover,
Byerlees law is a conservative approach: less deviatoric
stress is required to deform rock already fractured in a
wide range of orientations than to generate new fractures.
However, overburdens accumulate in complex variety.
What if the overburden itself contains halite, as in the
Great Kavir or offshore Yemen? What are the different
roles of disseminated halite or layered halite in weakening the overburden? What proportion of halite, and other
evaporites, is necessary before we should treat the overburden as fluid? And what of shale? Overpressuring is
known to promote fracturing in shale, but what if shale is
prefractured? What is the role of diagenesis and compaction (downward, upward, and lateral)? Without these
data, our knowledge of salt tectonics is broad but skeletal.
Then there is the third dimension. At the close of the
fluid era, the long-ignored three-dimensionality of fluids
24
Jackson
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