Project

forelandbasin; Neogene; Zagros; sediments

Lead
Lay summary
The Zagros foreland basin located in southern Iran is a Neogene-Recent sedimentary basin that is forming in response to ongoing collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates. Its superb exposure, high rates of deformation and sedimentation and abundant oil and gas reserves make it a unique natural laboratory to better understand foreland basins in general. The primary goal of this project is understand how the Zagros foreland basin formed and in particular, to evaluate how the rheology of the deforming fold-thrust belt controlled the adjacent basin. This project forms the PhD topic of Mortaza pirouz who began work at the University of Geneva in June 2008. He is supervised by Guy Simpson,  (University of Geneva).

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 21.02.2013

Active participation

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

In a previous proposal* to the Swiss National Science Foundation we obtained three years of funding to enable the hiring of PhD student Mortaza Pirouz to undertake a tectono-stratigraphic investigation of the Neogene Foreland basin in the Zagros. Our work has mainly involved determining the stratigraphic architecture and depositional environments of the various Neogene deposits and linking these with the modern day system. In this proposal we request an additional one year of funding which would enable the PhD candidate to extend and complete his thesis. In particular, during this additional year we propose (1) to perform Sr isotope measurements to constrain the age of the Guri member and other limestone units across the Zagros basin using Sr87/Sr86 stratigraphy, (2) to extend our 3d tectono-stratigraphic model to the Fars region and (3) to write up and complete the PhD thesis. This additional year will provide us with important new time constraints on the basin evolution (which are currently lacking) and enable us to provide for the first time a large scale geometrical model for the entire basin and its evolution during the Neogene. Thus, obtaining this funding is likely to have a significant influence on the final impact of the entire project. * The title of the original project was "Influence of wedge rheology on the development of foreland basin systems: Insight from the Zagros orogen and numerical modelling" (SNF Project 200021-117582 ).