Abstract
We investigate the source of non-purely gravitational horizontal stresses in the Paris basin, a nowadays tectonically quiet intracratonic basin, in its eastern border of which outstandingly dense stress measurements are available. Based on a synthesis of published data, the stress state in the basin is first shown to be very close to the one that may be extrapolated for the underlying basement, in terms of principal stress orientations and horizontal to vertical stress ratios. This is in favour of a mechanical coupling between the basement and its sedimentary cover, which may seem contradictory to the presence of several weak rock layers in the basin fill, e.g. an argillite layer that was shown to bear low deviatoric stresses, and salt layers that are implicated in a major decollement elsewhere. To unravel this apparent contradiction, a 3D-numerical modelling is performed, following a rigorous inverse problem approach, to determine the long-term elastic properties of both the basement and the basin rocks. The objective is to find the set of elastic constants that provides the best fit between the calculated stress state in the basin and the in situ data, by assuming that the stress state in the basement is known. This methodology provides a realistic set of mechanical parameters, in agreement with previous studies, which leads to the conclusion that the horizontal stresses in the basin constitute its mechanical response to the stresses that developed in the underlying basement during and since the last tectonic event (Alpine phase). The fact that horizontal stresses could be transmitted across the weak horizons, contrary to what may be expected at first glance, is explained both by the geometry of the basin and the fact that, over the long term, the stiffnesses of the various sedimentary rocks are only slightly different from each other.
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