Sedimentary basins can be distinguished by their plate tectonic settings and characteristic rock types. At least six types can be recognised. These are summarised in the table below and related to our Tectonic models.
Within these global sedimentary basins, as deposition environments shift through time, patterns of sedimentary facies are produced, related to their depositional environment. As depositional environments change position, adjacent sedimentary facies will succeed each other in vertical deposition sequences, i.e. vertical changes of the lithology, due to transgression or regression, reflect similar lateral changes (e.g. sediments will coarsen laterally as well as upwards). Change may be caused by:
Basin Type | Characteristic sediments | Depositional environments |
Examples of Global Tectonic Models |
---|---|---|---|
Rift or aulacogen | Earliest rocks volcanic overlain by thick gravel
and sand; younger rocks may include evaporites and limestones. Long lived sediment-filled grabens. Little deformation. |
Rivers and lakes changing to shallow-marine |
cratons,
continental rifts |
Intra cratonic | Homogeneous quartz-rich sands and limestones,
but may include muds, evaporites, or coal at certain times. Little deformation. |
Mostly shallow- marine with some deltaic |
platform sediments and basins |
Passive margin | Quartz-rich sands and limestones passing
seaward to muds. Diapirism. |
Shallow-marine shelf to deeper-marine |
platform sediments and basins |
Trench | Fine sediments overlying ocean-floor basalts.
Extensive. Deformed accretionary wedge. |
Deep marine | accretionary prisms |
Forearc\Backarc | Varied thick sediments ranging from pelagic
through turbidites to alluvial fans, much derived from adjacent orogenic belts. Volcanoclastics common. Deformed accretionary wedge. | Non-marine to deep marine | accretionary prisms,
fold and thrust belts |
Foreland | Heterogeneous gravels, sands and muds derived
from the orogenic belt and shed on to the continental craton; may be coal-bearing. Relatively stable areas. |
Mostly river and deltaic |
foreland basins |
(Partly after Dott and Batten, 1988)