The tectonic differences between the east and the west in the deep-water area of the northern South China Sea
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The tectonic differences between the east and the west in the deep-water area of the northern South China Sea XIA Zhongyu1, WAN Zhifeng1, 2, 3*, WANG Xianqing1, SHI Qiuhua4, CAI Song5, XIA Bin1 1 School of Marine Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal
Engineering/Key Laboratory of Offshore Oil Exploration and Development of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China; 2 The State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation (Southwest Petroleum University),
Chengdou 610500, China 3 The Key Laboratory of Gas HydrateMinistry of Land and Resources, Qingdao 266071, China 4 Center for Assessment and Development of Real Estate, Shenzhen 518034, China 5 Shenzhen Branch of CNOOC Ltd., Guangzhou 510240, China
Received 17 March 2015; accepted 5 May 2015 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract
The deep-water area of the northern South China Sea, which has active and complicated tectonics, is rich in natural gas and gas hydrate. While the tectonic characteristics is different obviously between the east and the west because of the special tectonic position and tectonic evolution process. In terms of submarine geomorphology, the eastern shelf-slope structure in Pearl River Mouth Basin is characterized by having wide sub-basins and narrow intervening highs, whereas the western (Qiongdongnan Basin) structure is characterized by narrow subbasins and wide uplift. As to the structural features, the deep-water sags in the east are all structurally halfgrabens, controlled by a series of south-dipping normal faults. While the west sags are mainly characterised by graben structures with faulting in both the south and north. With regards to the tectonic evolution, the east began neotectonic activity when the post-rifting stage had completed at the end of the Middle Miocene. In the Baiyun Sag, tectonic activity became strong and was characterised by rapid subsidence and obvious faulting. Whereas in the west, neotectonic activity began at the end of the Late Miocene with rapid deposition and weak fault activity. Key words: structural feature, tectonic evolution, tectonic difference, deep-water basins, northern South China Sea Citation: XIA Zhongyu, WAN Zhifeng, WANG Xianqing, SHI Qiuhua, CAI Song, XIA Bin. 2016. The tectonic differences between the east and the west in the deep-water area of the northern South China Sea. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 35(1): 86–95, doi: 10.1007/s13131-0160799-8
1 Introduction The deep-water area is the hotspot of oil and gas exploration in the world. While the deep-water area on the northern margin of the South China Sea located at the ocean-continent transition zone, which has active and complicated tectonics, is rich in oil, natural gas, gas hydrate and other mineral resources (Gong et al., 1997; Zhu and Mi, 2010; Trung, 2012; Wang et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2015). The South China Sea is located at the junction of the Eurasian plate, the Indo-Australian pla
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