Growth of normal faults in flexural foreland basins: a case study of the Northern Alpine Foreland Basin

The nucleation and subsequent vertical and lateral growth of normal faults have been the focus of many studies in extensional settings as these are important conduits for heat or fluid transfer. However, little attention has been attributed to normal fault growth in flexural foreland basins. The flexural downbending of the foreland plate generates extensional stresses, leading to the formation of normal faults in flexural foreland basins. Therefore, besides having an important role for subsurface fluid flow, normal faults in foreland basins are a fingerprint of the tectonic events associated with the downbending of the lower plate during collisional tectonics. In this study, we quantify the Oligocene to Early Miocene spatial and temporal evolution of the normal faults and their growth styles in the Northern Alpine Foreland Basin (NAFB). For this approach we use two 3D seismic volumes in the depth domain, located in the German part of the NAFB, to interpret both normal faults and prominent seismic horizons. This allows us to construct throw-depth and throw-length profiles to quantify changes in fault-parallel and down-dip throw patterns. This analysis allows us to reconstruct how the normal faults in our study area grew in 3D over time. Throw-depth profiles of the faults generally record throw maxima for either the foreland unconformity reflector or Oligocene aged reflectors, subsequently decreasing both up-and downward. This implies that following nucleation, the faults grew both upward into the syn-flexural fill of the basin and downward into the pre-flexural basement. Furthermore, comparing throw-depth and throw-length profiles of the faults in both seismic volumes shows that lateral fault growth is coupled with the fault tip moving towards younger stratigraphy. This is highlighted in the eastern German NAFB, where the vertical linkage between a lower segment that nucleated in the Eocene-Rupelian and an upper segment that nucleated in the Late Chattian is observed. To summarize, the observations imply that normal faults in the German NAFB were newly formed during flexural downbending of the European plate, preferably nucleating at the top of the plate before growing downward. This is different from fault growth observed in purely extensional settings, where faults typically grow upward instead of downward. Finally, the variable normal fault activity in the different seismic volumes in the German NAFB point out basin-parallel variations in flexural subsidence, possibly driven by spatiotemporal variations in Alpine frontal thrusting and/or slab pull.