Counting marmots…
The Pennsylvanian-Permian Paradox Basin is an asymmetrical basin on the Colorado Plateau (Figure 1.1) that has been studied for decades due to its unique geologic history and economic quantities of potash, petroleum, and minerals such as uranium, vanadium, radium, and copper. The basin has a complex tectonic history, made more difficult to interpret due to the large volume of Pennsylvanian-aged salt deposited in the northern part of the basin, now forming a series of salt walls. The basin has been interpreted as a foreland basin by Barbeau (2003), formed in response to loading by the Uncompahgre Uplift, which delineates the northeastern boundary of the basin. There is no definitive evidence, to date, of the tectonic influence of later tectonic events, namely the Late Cretaceous Laramide orogeny. Understanding the evolution of the salt walls and intervening strata within the basin will help identify indicators of tectonic regimes and influences throughout the basin history. The Paradox Basin contains the thickest contiguous salt deposit in continental North America (Hite, 1960), which makes it an important outcrop analog for subsurface salt systems around the world, including the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, and south Atlantic Margin. Most of the work to date in the northern Paradox Basin has been conducted on the large-scale salt walls, such as Castle Valley, Salt Valley, and Moab Valley in Utah (Figure 1.1), but relatively little work has been done on the Colorado side of the basin to the southeast. Additionally, little work has been conducted on smaller-scale salt structure, such as Gibson dome, Lockhart anticline, and Rustler dome (Figure 1.1). Research must be conducted on these small-scale salt features to further academic and industrial understanding of the geology and evolution of this salt system because these features are more intact, less eroded, and, therefore, may contain better preserved evidence of the relationship between tectonic movement and reactivation, salt wall evolution, and halokinetic stratigraphy.
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