Across buried sedimentary basins, the dissolution-prone nature of evaporite sequences drives the formation of collapse structures (e.g., sinkholes), fundamentally transforming landscapes at large scales. Understanding where, why, and how such structures form is crucial, given they pose geological hazards that may threaten human safety and infrastructure stability, or may affect subsurface resource extraction and geological storage. Here, we use 3D seismic reflection and borehole data from the Southern North Sea Basin to document giant (km-wide and several hundred-metres deep) collapse structures within the Zechstein Supergroup (Permian) that developed at the basin-scale (>10,000km2). Critically, these structures invariably overlie gypsum buildups capped by thick halite, with seismic-stratigraphic relationships enabling precise dating and facilitating accurate modelling. We propose that the transformation of gypsum to anhydrite during early burial initiated the extrusion of NaCl-undersaturated water, which provoked dissolution of the capping halite, leading to collapse at the depositional surface. The resulting landscape was buried and thus preserved by a potash infilling unit. To the best of our knowledge, the basin-wide development of this type of structures has not previously been described in the stratigraphic record. 

">
Skip to main content
Basin-scale development of giant collapse structures induced by gypsum diagenesis

Basin-scale development of giant collapse structures induced by gypsum diagenesis

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1130/G53338.1. This is version 3 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

Jimmy Moneron, Christopher Aiden-Lee Jackson 

Abstract

Across buried sedimentary basins, the dissolution-prone nature of evaporite sequences drives the formation of collapse structures (e.g., sinkholes), fundamentally transforming landscapes at large scales. Understanding where, why, and how such structures form is crucial, given they pose geological hazards that may threaten human safety and infrastructure stability, or may affect subsurface resource extraction and geological storage. Here, we use 3D seismic reflection and borehole data from the Southern North Sea Basin to document giant (km-wide and several hundred-metres deep) collapse structures within the Zechstein Supergroup (Permian) that developed at the basin-scale (>10,000km2). Critically, these structures invariably overlie gypsum buildups capped by thick halite, with seismic-stratigraphic relationships enabling precise dating and facilitating accurate modelling. We propose that the transformation of gypsum to anhydrite during early burial initiated the extrusion of NaCl-undersaturated water, which provoked dissolution of the capping halite, leading to collapse at the depositional surface. The resulting landscape was buried and thus preserved by a potash infilling unit. To the best of our knowledge, the basin-wide development of this type of structures has not previously been described in the stratigraphic record. 

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5ZD88

Subjects

Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Keywords

gypsum, Collapse Structure, Seismic reflection data, Zechstein

Dates

Published: 2025-01-23 11:14

Last Updated: 2025-05-30 00:57

Older Versions

License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Data Availability (Reason not available):
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article. The SNS MegaSurvey and well datasets analysed during this study are included in the article and can be found in the NSTA’s UK National Data Repository (https://ndr.nstauthority.co.uk/).