New Ways to Predict Sediment Production and Deposition: Integrated Source to Sink Maps at Pluri-Basins-Scale

The knowledge acquired on the exhumation of the Pyrenean chain and the evolution of the adjacent foreland basins makes this Alpine-type domain a good laboratory to better constrain a full sediment routing system in a compressive context and to apprehend the driving processes controlling the sediment routing in space and time.

This source-to-sink study seeks to understand the evolution of sedimentary routing from the source through the transfer zone to the final sink. Within this new cartography, we propose to compile the data over the entire peri-Pyrenean domain gathered in the “Source-to-Sink” project, a TotalEnergies–BRGM research program. We produced large scale quantitative and qualitative maps to better observe and interpret the impacts of tectonic, climatic and surface processes on the Sediment routing system (SRS) behavior.

The maps include kinematic reconstructions of the Iberian–European–Mediterranean system, restored sequential cross-sections, magnitude of exhumation by thermochronology, source tracking, characterization of weathering and erosion surfaces, synthesis of the major structural accidents activity, paleogeographic reconstructions, analysis of sedimentary geometries and transport directions as well as the quantification of volumes preserved in the basins.

The time steps chosen for these 4 maps account for the different stages of tectono-sedimentary evolution of the peri-Pyrenean system at the syn- and post-orogenic stages. The compilations carried out compare exhumed domains and sedimentation zones in terms of fluxes and volumes and make it possible to map the routing systems and discuss the drivers for the surface evolution during the construction/destruction cycle of an orogen.