Foreland basin—a FORTRAN program to model the formation of foreland basins resulting from the flexural deflection of the lithosphere caused by a time-varying distributed load

Abstract

A FORTRAN program is described that calculates the deflection of a thin elastic plate resulting from a time-varying distributed load. The program is useful for modeling the subsidence of a foreland basin where the elastic plate is the lithosphere and the distributed load is a wedge-shaped thrust sheet. The deflection is calculated for a specific load distribution, and hence at a specific time but one can prescribe various loads at different times in the loading history so that the basin subsidence history can be shown.