Dynamics of extensional basin formation and inversion: introduction

Abstract

This volume contains a cohection of papers on the dynamics of extensional basin formation and inversion presented at the 3rd annual workshop of the International Lithosphere Program Task Force “Origin of Sedimentary Basins” in Sundvollen. Norway, 18-23 August 1992. Previous workshops of the ILP Task Force had been in Rueil Malmaison, France (1990) and in Matrahaza, Hungary (19911, on the rim of the Pannonian basin. The Task Force also organized a number of sessions during the 1992 European Geophysical Society and the 1993 European Union of Geosciences conferences. Reports of these meetings have been published in a number of special volumes and papers (Cloetingh et al., 1993a,b; Stephenson, 1993; Cloetingh, Sassi and Task Force Team, 1994). The 4th Task Force meeting, focusing on the interplay of extension and compression, was held in Benevento (Southern Italy) in October 1993. A selection of papers presented at that Task Force workshop will be published in a forthcoming special volume of Tectonophysics. The emphasis of the 5th workshop of the Task Force, taking place in the Dead Sea Rift, Israel, is on rifting and strike-slip tectonics. The 1995 workshop will be organized in the southern Pyrenean foreland basin with the aim of examining the relationships between tectonics and eustasy in foreland-fold-and-thrust belts. The emphasis of the Sundvollen workshop was on modelling studies as well as observational approaches to the dynamics of basin extension and inversion. Important elements of the meeting were the discussion of extensional tectonics, rifting in passive margin settings, and volcanism and magmatism in rifts and basins. Following the Task Force strategy to link subsurface data to field analogues, an important part of the meeting was devoted to a thematic excursion in the Oslo Rift. Field guides have been published separately (Larsen et al., 1992a).