GGAC  organizes field trips for industry and institutions/academia in the Pyrenees and related foreland basins. The Pyrenees are a world-class site for leading field trips and training courses because of the wide range of structural and depositional settings, superb outcrops, accessibility, and excellent weather. Field trips are organized upon-request. The general themes covered are:

• Depositional systems
  • Deepwater
  • Delta
  • Fan delta
  • Lacustrine
  • Fluvial
• Tectonic Settings (Structure and related sedimentary basins)
  • Compression
  • Thrust Systems
    • Inversion Tectonics
    • Deep Water FTB Field Analogues
    • Fractured Carbonates
  • Extensional Fault Systems
  • Salt Tectonics

Deepwater

Basins for field trips on deepwater subject are:

• Ainsa basin and Jaca basin (Eocene)
• Ripoll basin (Eocene)
• Areny basin (Upper Cretaceous)
• Basque and Cantabrian basins (Cretaceus-Oligocene)

GGAC   has a vast deepwater dataset including:

• Outcrop characterizations, and related tabulated data
• Geophysical data (synthetic/real, surface and subsurface)
• 3-D hierarchical geocellular structure and facies models (basin-scale to bed-scale)
• Flow-simulated upscaled models

Topics that can be covered are:

• Transport and sedimentation processes
• Methods of architectural and stratigraphic analysis
• Mass-transport deposits, origin and effects on reservoir distribution
• Role of folding and faulting on turbidite sandstone distribution
• From source to sink, contrasting continental and shallow-marine to deepwater terrigenous stratigraphy

Examples of summary contents for some field trips on deepwater subject

1. Turbidite elements of the Ainsa and Jaca basin (Eocene, southern Pyrenees)

The Ainsa and Jaca basins represent slope and base-of slope depositional setting, in a foredeep to piggy-back evolving basin context. The basin-fill is 4 km thick and can be subdivided as four major depositional cycles, bounded by kilometre scaled mass-wasting truncation surfaces. Major cycle boundaries represent slope destruction episodes and thrust-driven basin reorganization. Each major cycle is made up of several turbidite systems (80-800 m thick), in turn made up of: stacked channel, overbank, and lobe elements plus a variety of mass-transport deposits. Outcrops allow for:

• Comprehensive inspection of the transverse cross-sectional architecture of turbidite-channels and detailed correlation (bed by bed to package scale) of channel to overbank and mass-transport deposits in a direction perpendicular to paleoflow. Leading to complete understanding of the genetics and depositional heterogeneity of a variety of channel-fills elements (erosional, mixed, depositional).

• 3D-Stacking patterns of channel-fills, to be discussed in terms of growing-anticline topography. Gamma-Ray profiles and synthetic seismics are available for a discussion about resolution in seismics and scales of heterogeneity.

• Mass-transport complexes vs. turbidite sandstone distribution

• Detailed inspection of partial cross-sectional architecture of lobe elements

• Facies trends across the slope and into the base-of-slope at the scale of individual turbidite systems (N/G, thickness, facies proportion )

• Deepwater Ichnology. Several ichnospecies are present, some bear significant predictive implications, all are integrated in architectural analysis.

• The contents of this trip are generally organized to be suitable for both exploration geologists/geophysicists, facies modelers, and reservoir engineers.

2. South-Pyrenean Mass-transport deposits

Mass-transport deposits (MTD' s) represent a significant volume in many slope and base-of-slope settings. In general, the processes and products related to mass-transport tend to diminish petroleum potential, either by erosion/resedimentation or by substraction of accommodation space. However, some MTD' s can be reservoirs, and others indicate bypass and sand-accumulation.

They can also relate to sequence boundaries. Understanding MTD' s is therefore relevant for the exploration geologist/geophysicist. South-Pyrenean MTD' s range from Upper-Cretaceous to Oligocene and occurred in different portions of foreland basins. Some are proven gas reservoirs. They can be terrigenous, carbonate, or mixed. They exhibit a variety of structures, from extensional and contractional slides and slumps to debris-flows.

Delta and Fan Delta

Basins and formations for field trips on delta subject are:

• Areny Group (Upper Cretaceous)
• Tremp-Graus basin (Eocene) , more specifically, including the Roda Sandstone
• Sobrarbe delta complex

The dataset includes:

Detailed outcrop characterizations, correlation diagrams and geological maps

Ground Penetrating Radar

Fluvial

Fluvial deposits from the Tremp-Graus, Ainsa, and Ebro basin are Eocene to Miocene aged. They exhibit a variety of architectural styles (from kilometre-wide and relatively coarse-grained sand sheets, to ribbon-like and fine-grained sandstone bodies) representative of diverse fluvial regimes. The dataset includes traditional outcrop characterizations, remote sensing, geophysical data (GPR and electrical tomograhy) Interactions between tectonics, climate and base-level.

Thrust Systems

Field Trips will be held in the Southern Pyrenees, a world-class area for Thrust and Fold Belt structures. They will be mainly localized along the ECORS deep seismic profile across the Central Pyrenees and dealing with the following structures:

• Geometries of the Thrust Front and related Triangle Zone
• Piggy-back and break-back thrust sequences (Serres Marginals Thrust Sheet)
• Fault related Folds in the Montsec and Boixols Thrust Sheets

Inversion Tectonics

Early stages of the Pyrenean compression (Late Cretaceous) are characterized by the inversion of previous Early Cretaceous extensional basins. Inversion structures are very well preserved in the upper-most thrust sheets of the Southern Pyrenees:

• Pedraforca
• Boixols
• Cotiella

Deep Water Fold and Thrust Belts

Deep Water FTB structures are well preserved in the Ainsa Basin. A complete cross-section through the Ainsa DW FTB reveals structural geometries from small-scale to regional scale and their relationships with turbidite sedimentation and dispersion. Extensional collapse features are commonly developed during the growing of the thrust related anticline. Other topics to be cover are: Growth geometries in the Sant Corneli Anticline and related mass-transport deposits.

Fractured Carbonates

Different fracture patterns in calcareous rocks can be analyzed in the following Fault Related Folds:

• Bellmunt Anticline (Eastern Pyrenees)
• Sant Corneli Inversion Anticline (Central Pyrenees)
• Añisclo Anticline (Central Pyrenees)

Salt Tectonics

Triassic evaporites involved in the Betics and Pyrenean Ranges give well exposed examples of contractionally deformed diapirs previously formed during the Cretaceous extension. In these examples both the internal diapir and overburden structure can be easily and broadly observed. This, and the presence of syn-tectonic sediments around the diapirs allow to decipher the main geometric and kinematics features of the diapirs squeezed and, in some cases, transported during subsequent contraction. The field trips will deal with next structures which represent different stages of contractionally deformed diapirs:

• Bicorp-Quesa (External Betics)
• Salinas de Añana, Vilasana de Mena and Salinas de Buralón (Western Cantabrian Pyrenees)

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