Combined tectonic-sediment supply-driven cycles in a Lower Carboniferous deep-marine foreland basin, Moravice Formation, Czech Republic

Abstract

The Lower Carboniferous Moravian–Silesian Culm Basin (MSCB) represents the easternmost part of the Rhenohercynian system of collision-related, deep-water foreland basins (Culm facies). The Upper Visean Moravice Formation (MF) of the MSCB shows a distinct cyclic stratigraphic arrangement. Two major asymmetric megacycles bounded by basal sequence boundary, each about 500 to 900 m thick, have been revealed. The megacycles start with 50- to 250-m-thick, basal segments of erosive channels: overbank successions and slope apron deposits interpreted as lowstand turbidite systems. Up-section they pass into hundred metre-thick, fine-grained, low-efficiency turbidite systems. Palaeocurrent data show two prominent directions, basin axis-parallel, SSW–NNE directions, which are abundant in the whole MF, and basin axis-perpendicular to oblique, W–E to NW–SE directions, which tend to be confined to the basal parts of the megacycles or channel-lobe transition systems in their upper parts. Based on the facies characteristics, palaeocurrent data, sandstone composition data and trace-fossil distribution data, we suggest a combined tectonics–sediment supply-driven model for the MF basin fill. Periods of increased tectonic activity resulted in slope oversteepening probably combined with increased rate of lateral W–E sediment supply into the basin, producing the basal sequence boundary and the subsequent lowstand turbidite systems. During subsequent periods of tectonic quiescence, the system was filled mainly from a distant southern point source, producing the thick, low efficiency turbidite systems. Consistently with the previous models, our own sediment composition data indicate a progressively increasing sediment input from high-grade metamorphic and magmatic sources up-section, most probably related to an uplift in the source area and progressive unroofing of its structurally deeper crustal parts. The first occurrence of the Cruziana–Nereites ichnofacies in sand-rich turbidite systems in the youngest parts of the MF (Goβel to Goβspi Zone), supported by rapidly increasing quartz concentrations in sandstones, is thought to indicate a transition from generally underfilled to generally overfilled phase in evolution of the MSCB basin. This transition may be linked to the onset of Upper Visean phase of northward basin-fill progradation assumed by previous authors.