Research progress and challenges of thermal history reconstruction in sedimentary basins

Abstract

The current status and development of the methods of thermal history reconstruction in sedimentary basins are introduced systematically in this paper. The reconstruction methods of thermal history of sedimentary basins mainly include thermal indicators and geodynamic methods. The former mainly considers thermal history at the basin scale; however, the latter uses thermal history of the basin on the scale of the lithosphere. Thermal indicators mainly include the maturity index of organic matter and low temperature thermochronology parameters. The thermal indicator method is considered to be feasible with high precision, because the simulation results can be verified by measured data. In actual work, a variety of thermal indicators are generally used to couple the inversion of thermal history to improve the accuracy and reliability of the simulation results. For basins with various tectonic evolution stages, the thermal indicator method and the geodynamic method can complement and verify each other, thereby realizing quantitative restoration of the complex thermal history of ancient basins. At the same time, the thermal history of basins provides an important method and technology for the study of shale gas preservation during tectonic uplift and basin-mountain tectono-thermal evolution coupling. At present, there are still many problems and challenges in the reconstruction of thermal history of deep and ultra-deep strata, marine strata and ancient strata.

Keywords

• thermal history
• vitrinite reflectance
• low temperature thermochronology
• geodynamic model
• marine strata
• sedimentary basins