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National Science Foundation Workshop
December 9-12, 2004
Stanford University, Stanford CA

 

 

Driving mechanisms and chronology for formation of the Sea of Okhotsk

Main Authors:

Brad Ritts
Jeremy Hourigan
Alexei Soloviev
Aleksandr Khanchuk
Cari Johnson
Laura Webb

Scientific Rationale:

Understanding the time-space patterns of basin formation are critical for evaluating the mechanisms responsible for the growth of the Sea of Okhotsk and distribution of economic resources


Broader Impacts:

    1. Project establishes a international, collaborative and multidisciplinary consortium to understand the Sea of Okhotsk basin framework
    2. Economic interests: The Sea of Okhotsk possesses significant hydrocarbon reserves with active oil and gas production in the Sakhalin region, gas in Western Kamchatka. The Magadan Basin is under exploration.
    3. Provides a natural laboratory to investigate the roles of continental extrusion and plate rollback in the formation of a 1.5 million km 2 back arc basin
    4. Do changes in the Pacific free-face along the NE Asian Margin influence intracontinental deformation in Asia?

Approaches:

  • Data Sets:
      • Seismic Data: There is a large amount of existing seismic data current being reprocessed and prepared for publication for the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Khanchuk will act as liason to Russian seismology groups. Collaboration for basin wide compilation
      • Geologic data: Field work to link stratigraphy on-land with that in the offshore including Western Kamchatka, Uda River Region.
      • Basin and petroleum analysis: stratigraphy, organic geochemistry, provenance (including detrital thermochronology), low temperature thermochronology, basin modeling
      • Time-space patterns of Tertiary magmatism

  • Personnel, ongoing research, and possible collaborators:
      • Hourigan, Soloviev, I. Miller, Ray Fletcher – Emplacement and Exhumation of the Sredinniy Range gneiss dome (pending)
      • Soloviev and Hourigan: Revised chronostratigraphy of the Western Kamchatka Basin
      • Ritts, Hourigan, Soloviev and Khanchuk: Establish links FEB-RAS seismologists (Fall 2005)
     

     

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