Project title: North Atlantic Palaeogeographic Reconstruction: An Integrated Approach
Researcher: Robert Murphy
The research comprised building a Sinemurian palaeogeographic map for the North Atlantic area with the purpose of comprising a pilot project to test a multi-disciplinary approach for source to sink facies modelling in a GIS mapping environment. The underlying need for such research was thus twofold, firstly to produce a Sinemurian palaeogeography for the North Atlantic realm, at a detail level that was not previously available, and secondly, to fulfil the pilot project function with a view to validating future palaeogeography proposals for additional stratigraphic intervals.
Hypothesis: The hypothesis is that a multi-disciplinary integrated approach applied to the entire region in a GIS environment can provide an optimum method to link source areas and depositional areas, and to map depositional facies on a North Atlantic scale, and at previously unachieved detail level in the Irish Basins context.
Objectives: The project will deliver a detailed palaeogeographic map for the Sinemurian interval in Irish Offshore Basins and North Atlantic environs. This will be built using both legacy and newly generated data, across multiple scales. Outputs will include the map and an integrated GIS database comprising ESRI shapefiles for all interpreted map elements and control points.