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Stratigraphy and tectonics of the Roer Valley Graben
Abstract
The Roer Valley Graben is the most prominent Cenozoic tectonic feature in the Netherlands onshore, filled with up to 2000 m of predominantly Upper Oligocene to Quaternary sediments. It forms the northwestern branch of the Rhine Graben rift system. To the northeast the graben is bordered by a major faultzone, the Peel Boundary Fault, and to the southwest by a number of downstepping faults. The Roer Valley Graben developed upon pre-existing sedimentary basins of Carboniferous, Triassic to Early Jurassic and Late Jurassic age. The Cenozoic graben is structurally closely related to the Late Jurassic basin and to the area affected by inversion tectonics at the end of the Cretaceous. Differential subsidence of the Roer Valley Graben started during the Late Oligocene. Displacements along the Peel Boundary Fault were recorded from the Late Oligocene onwards. Initially the average displacement was 0.01 mm a-1, but it increased during the Quaternary to 0.8 mm a-1. Fault displacements at the southwestern boundary faults of the Roer Valley Graben are smaller than at the Peel Boundary Fault.
Supplementary resource (1)
Data
July 1994
... The majority of the earthquakes is conned to the Roer Valley Graben, which is bounded by two active fault zones: the Peel Boundary Fault Zone to the northeast and the Feldbiss Fault Zone to the southwest. The main diference between these faults or fault zones is that the former is relatively narrow, up to 1 km, while the latter is relatively wide, up to 5 km (Geluk et al., 1994;Houtgast & Van Balen, 000). The earthquakes in this area are of limited magnitude, but occasionally powerful enough to cause damage. ...
... The Roer Valley Rift system has been studied in detail with respect to its recent and long-term subsidence and uplift history (Zijerveld et al., 199;Geluk et al., 1994;Van den Berg et al., 1994; Houtgast & Van Balen, 000) and rheo logical and geomechanical modelling (Dirkzwager et al.,000). Subsidence rates difer through time and may be related to changes in fault activity (slip rate). ...
... Subsidence rates difer through time and may be related to changes in fault activity (slip rate). Long term subsidence rates based on geological measurements in the Roer Valley Graben show that they were not constant; periods of acceleration and deceleration occurred during the last 8 Myr (Geluk et al., 1994;Michon et al., 003). This has to be taken into account in the interpretation of paleo-seismicity (e.g. ...
This chapter from Geology of the Netherlands (2nd edition) gives an overview of the natural and induced seismicity in the Netherlands. The full book is available as open access on https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/100510
... The most important fracture system in the Netherlands in this regard is the approximately 1100 km long complex European Cenozoic Rift System (ECRIS; Fig. 9.4) which extends from the Southern North Sea Basin, through the Lower Rhine Graben (also called Basin or Embayment), via the Jura, Saône Graben as far as the Valencia Trough (Zagwijn, 1989;Ziegler, 1992). The Roer Valley Graben is the main tectonic feature in the Lower Rhine Graben (Geluk et al., 1994;Ziegler, 1994;Michon et al., 2003;Van Balen et al., 2005), which is bordered by the Rhenish Massif in the east and south and by the Brabant Massif in the southwest. It started to develop in the Alpine foreland and propagated northwards (and southwards) to accommodate the stress from the Alpine-Mediterranean orogenic system. ...
... The Pyrenean inversion affected the West and Central Netherlands basins, the southern part of the Broad Fourteens Basin (Van Wijhe, 1987) and the Roer Valley Graben (Deckers, 2015) and was restricted to the southern North Sea (Michon et al., 2003). (Geluk et al., 1994). To the northwest, the rift system steps over to the West Netherlands Basin. ...
... Blocks of intermediate subsidence or uplift flank the central Roer Valley Graben on both sides. In the southwest, these areas are the Eastern and Western Campine Blocks, while the Venlo, Peel and Köln Blocks are recognized in the northeast (Geluk et al., 1994). The Campine Block is separated from the subsiding Roer Valley Graben by the Feldbiss Fault System (Dusar et al., 2001). ...
During the late Danian-Selandian Laramide phase, open-marine carbonate deposition of the Late Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene was replaced by clastic sediment infill of the Southern North Sea Basin. The Laramide phase, associated with domal uplift and subsidence of Mesozoic grabens, led to a break in sedimentation and reworking of Upper Cretaceous carbonates into marls. Consequently, Paleogene marine deposits are condensed in most areas. Late Paleocene to earliest Eocene uplift of basin margins caused major sand influxes into marginal marine environments with restricted circulation. In the North Sea area, global Paleogene warming culminated in near-tropical conditions and associated biota. Under maximum temperature conditions and differential subsidence, deltaic and submarine-fan sand deposition continued into the early Eocene. Cenozoic sediment input changed from the northwest during the Eocene, through northeastern sources in the Oligocene and Miocene, to dominantly southeastern and southern sources during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. The Paleocene- Eocene transition was interrupted by major volcanism, resulting in widespread ash layer deposition from volcanoes on the Greenland-Scotland ridge. From the middle Eocene onwards, regional subsidence interrupted by uplift phases led to transgression/regression patterns at the basins margins. In the North Sea Basin, a major discontinuity formed due to the Pyrenean inversion phase that occurred
just before Antarctic ice cap growth and global cooling at the onset of the Oligocene. From late Eocene to Mid Miocene, the basin experienced warmer and cooler phases, developing a rich, mostly endemic North Sea marine biota. In the early Oligocene, much of the Southern North Sea Basin drowned, and outer-neritic marine clays of the Rupel Formation (Boom Member) were deposited. During the late Oligocene through Pliocene, shallow marine sedimentation was balanced by subsidence resulting in monotonous sequences of marine clays and silts. During the Miocene Climate Optimum, peat formation was widespread at the southern margin of the North Sea Basin, followed by large-scale fluvial-deltaic deposition with local peatbogs as the climate cooled in the Late Miocene. The Upper Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene deposits are dominated by marine silty and sandy clays with ice-rafted debris, marking the first strong Northern Hemisphere glaciations, grading into shallow marine and fluvial sands towards the margins. These are overlain by predominantly sandy Pleistocene fluvial deposits. This chapter is structured around the varying tectonic and climatic factors that determined the structures of the North Sea Basin and its heterogeneous Paleogene-Neogene basin fill.
... It is mostly covered by 2D seismic surveys of different ages and qualities, with a series of wells penetrating the lower Triassic Main Buntsandstein Subgroup in focused, tectonically high areas. The limited character of the geological dataset increases uncertainties for geothermal operations in an area where several tectonic phases resulted in a network of faults with different orientations and characters, creating complex geometries and architectures during and after deposition (Geluk et al., 1994;Deckers et al., 2023). These complexities can affect the Buntsandstein thickness, lateral extent and properties, which are key parameters controlling the level of injectivity and lifetime of a geothermal system (Willems et al., 2020). ...
... To the southwest, the Oosterhout Platform and the Zeeland High separate the Roer Valley Graben from the Campine Basin and the London Brabant Massif further to the south (Kombrink et al., 2012;Deckers et al., 2023). To the northwest, the Roer Valley Graben continues into the West Netherlands Basin, where the fault direction changes from overall NW-SE to more WNW-ESE striking (Geluk et al., 1994;NITG, 2004;Worum et al., 2005). ...
... The structural evolution of the study area began during the Caledonian Orogeny in the Devonian, when the London-Brabant Massif was uplifted and the Campine basin formed a large depression to the north (Geluk et al., 1994;NITG, 2004). However, it was only during Late Carboniferous times that as a result of the Variscan Orogeny the precursor structure of the Roer Valley Graben and Peel-Maasbommel Complex started developing (NITG, 2004). ...
The lower Triassic Main Buntsandstein Subgroup represents a promising, but high-risk geothermal play in the Netherlands. Although the gross thickness in boreholes locally exceeds 200 m, the spatial distribution, geometries and preservation of these sedimentary units remained uncertain due to the lack of seismic data with sufficient resolution and the sparse borehole network. This creates uncertainty in the quantification of the aquifer dimensions that is essential for the planning of geothermal operations.
In this study, seismic interpretation and 2D palinspastic restoration of new and reprocessed seismic data were conducted and combined with borehole data to assess the tectonic evolution of the Roer Valley Graben in the southeastern Netherlands and its control on the spatial distribution of the Main Buntsandstein Subgroup sediments. Our results show that the central and southern parts of the Roer Valley Graben were active depocenters in the Early to Middle Triassic times dominated by fluvial sandstone deposition, providing important play elements for prospective leads on geothermal exploration. The northern part of the basin was a more marginal area where mostly fine-grained sediments were deposited. To the northwest, differential subsidence resulted in the development of areas where the Buntsandstein thickness is reduced to ∼150 m.
After deposition, the Main Buntsandstein sediments were compartmentalised by faulting related to post-depositional tectonic activity, locally reducing the lateral extent of the geothermal target areas down to 1–2 km in a ∼NE–SW direction. On the platform areas adjacent to the Roer Valley Graben and to the southeast, Jurassic sediments are largely absent and the Main Buntsandstein sediments are present at depths shallower than 2 km. These platforms are promising targets for further investigation, as the relatively shallow burial depths, compared to the central part of the Graben, may have contributed to the preservation of more favourable reservoir properties.
... The RVRS is bordered by the Rhenish Massif in the south and east, the Brabant Massif in the south-west and transitions into the North Sea Basin towards the north (Figure 1b). The adjacent Lower Rhine Graben forms the northern branch of the 1100-km-long European Cenozoic Rift System (ECRIS) (Geluk et al., 1994;Ziegler, 1990), the latter of which extends from the RVRS in the southern North Sea Basin, all the way to the Valencia Trough in north-eastern Spain (Zagwijn & Hager, 1987;Ziegler, 1990). The ECRIS formed in response to accommodate stress from the Alpine-Mediterranean orogenic system by northwards and southwards propagation from the Alpine foreland. ...
... The Roer Valley Graben (RVG) forms the centre of the RVRS and is the focus area of this research. The RVG is bounded in the north-east by the Peel Boundary Fault System, and in the south-west by the Feldbiss Fault System, respectively, separating the RVG from the Peel Block and the Campine Block (Geluk et al., 1994). The Peel Block is bounded on the northern side by the Tegelen Fault System, which separates it from the Venlo Block ( Figure 1a). ...
... At the Oligocene-Miocene boundary, the direction of maximum extension changed from WNW-ESE to NE-SW and new depocentres developed from this renewed fault | 3 of 33 EAGE SIEBELS et al. activity (Michon & van Balen, 2005). According to Geluk et al. (1994), the central RVG subsided a total of around 1000-1200 m since extension started in the late Oligocene, while the Peel Block experienced a maximum subsidence of 200 m during the same period. Correspondingly, the tectonic subsidence across the RVG varies between 250 and 600 m and between 30 and 110 m on the Peel Block (Michon et al., 2003). ...
The Miocene sequence in the Roer Valley Rift System consists of alternating open-to-shallow marine, coastal and fluvio-deltaic deposits. In this study, well logs, bio-chronostratigraphy and seismostratigraphy are used to characterize major units and their bounding unconformities and to infer sediment dispersal patterns. Three major unconformities occur in the sequence: the early, middle and late Miocene unconformities (EMU, MMU and LMU). The EMU formed due to tectonic motions related to the Savian phase. After formation of the EMU, a broad depocentre developed in the south-eastern part of the Roer Valley Graben (RVG). Sediment accumulation increased during this period and peaked in the middle Langhian, after which it diminished again to a low level during the late Serravallian. The decrease in sediment accumulation coincided with a period of tectonic subsidence along the major bounding fault zones (i.e. the Peel Boundary Fault System, the Feldbiss Fault System and the Veldhoven Fault System). The resulting transgression caused sediment starvation in the central RVG. Subsequently, global sea-level fall during the early Tortonian caused large-scale erosion, and formation of incised valleys on the highs adjacent to the RVG (Peel Block and Campine Block), as well as the south-eastern RVG, forming the MMU. However, sedimentation continued during this period in the central part of the RVG where no erosional hiatus developed. From the Tortonian onwards, accumulation rates increased again. The depocentre shifted towards the north-west and clinoforms developed in the RVG. During the latest Miocene, the depocentre was concentrated along the south-western margin of the RVG. Meanwhile, the depositional environment of the entire RVRS gradually shallowed as the LMU was formed.
... The Roer Valley Rift System (RVRS) is located in the southern part of the Netherlands and adjoining areas in Belgium and Germany ( Fig. 1; Geluk et al., 1994). The last rifting phase of the RVRS started during the Late Oligocene-Miocene transition and is still ongoing (Geluk et al., 1994;Michon et al., 2003;Van Balen et al., 2005) as, for example, evidenced by earthquakes (e.g. ...
... The Roer Valley Rift System (RVRS) is located in the southern part of the Netherlands and adjoining areas in Belgium and Germany ( Fig. 1; Geluk et al., 1994). The last rifting phase of the RVRS started during the Late Oligocene-Miocene transition and is still ongoing (Geluk et al., 1994;Michon et al., 2003;Van Balen et al., 2005) as, for example, evidenced by earthquakes (e.g. Camelbeeck et al., 2007;Hinzen et al., 2021). ...
... The origin of the RVRS dates back to the early Carboniferous, when extension affected Avalonia (Smit et al., 2018). Faults of the RVRS have been repeatedly reactivated in normal and reverse faulting modes during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic (Geluk et al., 1994) evidencing long lived lithosphere memory. The last extension phase of the RVRS started during the Late Oligocene (Ziegler, 1992;Michon et al., 2003) and is still ongoing Michon and Van Balen, 2005;Van Balen et al., 2005) as for example evidenced by occasional earthquakes (e.g. ...
The Peel Boundary Fault zone (PBFZ) is the 125 km long, seismically active, northern bounding fault zone of the Roer Valley Rift System (RVRS). The last damaging earthquake along the PBFZ was the Roermond earthquake of 1992. It had a magnitude of Mw 5.3 and no surface rupture. Previous results from two trenching studies located in the central and southeastern parts of the PBFZ provided evidence for two surface rupturing paleo-earthquakes. The largest earthquake had an estimated magnitude of Mw ~6.8 and a surface rupture length of at least 35 km. As it took place around the Late Pleniglacial – Late Glacial transition a link to glacio-isostatic motions is likely. Results from a new trench situated at the northwestern part of the PBFZ shows evidence for three to four paleo- earthquakes, of which three were surface rupturing. These comprise two normal faulting- and one, younger trans-tensional displacement. The normal faulting events have ~1 m vertical displacements each, which translate into magnitudes of Mw ~7. Like the previous results, they occurred during the Late Pleniglacial-Late Glacial transition, at ~15 ka and ~ 14 ka. The younger trans-tensional event occurred sometime during the Holocene, pre-dating an unaffected, 13th century man-made paleo-channel on the hangingwall. The potential fourth, non- surface rupturing earthquake is indirectly evidenced by loading deformations of a sand layer and a collapsed brick-wall in the infill of the paleo-channel. Comparison of our trenching results to those from the two previous studies, which were located farther to the southeast along the PBFZ, shows that for one event a correlation is possible. The correlation would indicate a surface rupture length of at least 55 km. Combined, all trenching results indicate that the characteristic maximum rupturing displacement is ~1 m, and thus that Mw ~7 is the maximum magnitude of paleo-earthquakes along the PBFZ.
... The Roer Valley Graben was also affected by Sub-Hercynian inversion, which was especially strong in the northwest, while the adjacent Maas-Bommel Complex subsided considerably as evidenced by the presence of a thick package of the Upper Cretaceous Chalk Group (Geluk et al., 1994;Gras, 1995;Gras & Geluk, 1999;Deckers, 2015;Fig. 1.14). ...
... This contrasts sharply with the Cenozoic of the northern sector of the Broad Fourteens Basin, which is twice as thick. In the Roer Valley Graben the Cenozoic reaches 2000 m thickness (Geluk et al., 1994;Van den Berg, 1994;Van den Berg et al., 1994). Subsidence was particularly pronounced after the Oligocene, when crustal extension associated with the development of the Lower Rhine rift system propagated into the Netherlands. ...
The geological evolution of the Netherlands has resulted in the development of a highly structured and surprisingly varied subsurface geology beneath a deceptively flat topography. In large parts of the Dutch subsurface, more than 10 km of predominantly siliciclastic sedimentary rocks overlie the metamorphic basement. Although several major unconformities are recorded in these strata, the geological record is represented by sedimentary rocks from the Late Paleozoic onwards. The basins, platforms and highs present in the subsurface formed in response to global reorganizations of
lithospheric plates. The main tectonic events that affected the area were: 1) the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies, resulting from the assembly of the Pangea supercontinent during the Paleozoic, 2) repeated rifting during the Mesozoic, related to the break-up of Pangea, 3) Alpine inversion, resulting initially from the rotation of the Iberian Peninsula and the later collision of Africa and Europe during the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene, and 4) Oligocene to Quaternary development of the European Cenozoic rift system coupled with strong, long wavelength vertical motions resulting from the opening of the Atlantic and the convergence of Africa-Europe. Notwithstanding the high degree of diversity of these events, faults are mainly parallel to each other and form predominantly NW-SE oriented structures. The general structural model is, therefore, one of repeated (oblique) reactivation of basement faults that maintain a control of the structural grain, independent of tectonic regime and stress direction. Thick Permian Zechstein salt in large parts of the subsurface was deformed during phases of extensive salt tectonics that led to structural reorganization, and (partial) decoupling of the basin fill from sub-salt faulting. The initiation of salt movement resulted in most cases from reactivation of (deep) basement faults.
... To the northwest it is connected with the West Netherlands Basin and towards Germany in the southeast it terminates against the Rhenish Massif (Kombrink et al., 2012). During Cenozoic times, the Roer Valley Graben was re-activated to connect with the Rhine Graben and it remains actively subsiding to the present day (Geluk et al., 1995;Peters & Van Balen, 2007). The basin was strongly inverted during the Late Cretaceous and as a result, most Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous sediments were eroded (De Jager, 2003;Duin et al., 2006). ...
The sedimentary and structural development in the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous period in the Netherlands is largely governed by the Late Cimmerian rift phase and the subsequent post-rift. The rifting affected the Dutch Central Graben in the northern offshore first. East-west extension during the Callovian and Oxfordian activated the faults and salt structures that bordered the existing Triassic graben structure and created accommodation space. The basin was filled with siliciclastic non-marine and marginal marine sediments, interrupted by thick and basin-wide coal seams at the Callovian-Oxfordian boundary. In the Kimmeridgian, the extension regime changed to NE-SW and provoked the reactivation of Paleozoic NW trending faults in the subsurface of the Netherlands. As a result, accommodation space was created in several other basins and thick stacks of sediments accumulated in the hanging walls of these faults. This continued throughout the latest Jurassic until the earliest Cretaceous when movement along the faults slowed down or stalled and footwall erosion occurred in many places. During the ensuing post-rift thermal sag phase, deposition extended outside the basins onto the bordering platforms but the basins remained the most active depocentres accumulating hundreds of metres of sediment up until the Aptian. In the Aptian and Albian, the formerly prevailing siliciclastic depositional systems were gradually replaced by carbonate-dominated systems. By that time, the vast majority of the Netherlands had become fully marine.
... The Mesozoic evolution of the WNB and the BFB has been well studied (Van Wijhe, 1987;Hooper et al., 1995;de Jager et al., 1996;van Balen et al., 2000;Verweij and Simmelink, 2002;Verweij et al., 2003). The southern region of the Netherlands, namely, the Roer Valley Graben and the adjacent highs, has been examined in detail (Zijerveld et al., 1992;Geluk et al., 1994;Gras, 1995;Gras and Geluk, 1999;van Balen et al., 2002;Michon et al., 2003). The German (central) part of the LSB was studied recently by Petmecky et al. (1999), Senglaub et al. (2005Senglaub et al. ( , 2006, and Munoz et al. (2007). ...
... To the northwest it is connected with the West Netherlands Basin and towards Germany in the southeast it terminates against the Rhenish Massif (Kombrink et al., 2012). During Cenozoic times, the Roer Valley Graben was re-activated to connect with the Rhine Graben and it remains actively subsiding to the present day (Geluk et al., 1995;Peters & Van Balen, 2007). The basin was strongly inverted during the Late Cretaceous and as a result, most Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous sediments were eroded (De Jager, 2003;Duin et al., 2006). ...
... The RVRS has a long tectonic history that comprises several Mesozoic and Cenozoic extension and inversion phases. The most recent extensional phase started at the Oligocene-Miocene transition and is still ongoing (Geluk et al., 1994;Van Balen et al., 2005). ...
The Quaternary is characterized by pronounced alterations between cold and warm climatic states, with the Mid-Pleistocene Transition marking a strong increase in the intensity of cold-climate conditions. River systems are sensitive to environmental perturbation (e.g., climate, tectonics, base level) and are expected to respond to such profound changes. This study uses a combination of terrace mapping and analysis of a dense borehole database to investigate the Meuse terrace staircase (and its deposits), and gain insight on how it reflects climatic and tectonic perturbations during the Quaternary. The lower reaches of the Meuse river, which has both its main water and sediment source in the Ardennes displays a well-developed terrace staircase that was sculpted mainly throughout the Quaternary. The staircase is located near the cities of Maastricht (southern Netherlands) and Liège (northwestern Belgium). About 30 terrace levels reflect signals of environmental perturbations in the lithological composition, gradients, thicknesses, and spatial distribution. The terraces are organized in groups, based on their morphological position, from old to young; these are the East Meuse terrace group and West Meuse High-, Middle- and Low terrace groups. Our findings show a consistent increase in the gravel content from older to younger terraces. The sandier composition of the deposits of the oldest terraces (Early Pleistocene) is closely related to the supply of the Miocene-Pliocene weathered material from the Ardennes. Younger terraces (Middle and Late Pleistocene) are much richer in gravel, evidencing sediment input from fresh or partially weathered bedrock. These changes point to a downstream migration of the gravel front throughout the Quaternary. The mean thickness of the terrace groups shows a slight increase, even though the same trend is not clear when each terrace is analyzed on an individual basis. The anomalous thickness of the Caberg 1 terrace suggests increased sediment input during the cold climatic conditions of the Elsterian (MIS 12), the first Quaternary glacial during which an ice sheet extended into the northern Netherlands. Reconstruction of terrace gradients reveals that older East Meuse terraces show a (reversed) gradient opposite to reconstructed palaeo flow directions, which is attributed to a combination of low gradients during terrace formation and footwall back-tilting of the Feldbiss Fault Zone. In our analysis we do not see clear evidence for the imprint of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which suggests that due to its gradual nature, its signal is either buffered or assimilated by the overall climatic signal of the Quaternary. This study offers a first complete temporal analysis of the Meuse terrace staircase, providing an important basis for better understanding the effects of Quaternary climatic change and tectonics, and their resulting effects in other river systems worldwide.
International cooperation in planning the earthquake map of northern Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands is emphasized.