Influence of mechanical stratigraphy and structural inheritance on the geometrical evolution of normal faults in the German Molasse Basin

Lithospheric flexure is the primary mechanism for the development of normal faults in foreland basins. While the tectonic regime defines the overall fabric of such flexure-induced faults, mechanical heterogeneity of the sedimentary sequence and pre-existing faults exert a major control on the geometry of the individual faults. Interpretation of 3-D seismic reflection data in the central part of the German Molasse Basin, a northern Alpine foreland basin, reveals a normal fault network that exhibits varying degrees of vertical segmentation. Two major faults oriented parallel to the strike of the Alpine orogen are characterised by geometrically coherent displacement of deeper Mesozoic strata and shallower Cenozoic strata. In contrast, another major fault system, oriented obliquely to the orogenic strike, shows an along-strike variation in geometric coupling between deeper and shallower structural levels. Although a thoroughgoing fault in the northeast, it bifurcates laterally to the southwest, with the deep and shallow segments decoupling across a southeastwardly-thickening, mechanically-weak layer. To establish the geometric evolution of these faults and understand to what extent it was governed by mechanical stratigraphy and structural inheritance, we here analyse throw distribution on the faults and variations in stratal thicknesses across the faults. High-resolution throw mapping indicates a general updip decrease in throw for the orogen-parallel faults, whereas the obliquely-oriented fault, in its coupled portion, has two throw maxima separated by a throw minimum at the mechanically incompetent interval. These results, together with syn-kinematic strata observations, show that the former faults initiated with the onset of the Cenozoic foreland flexure and grew upward by radial propagation, whereas the latter fault formed by an oblique reactivation of precursory Mesozoic faults and developed in the Cenozoic as a segmented structure. We hypothesise that the coupling of its deep and shallow segments to the northeast was established by a dip-linkage mechanism, which was inhibited further to the southeast as the mechanical barrier thickens. The reactivation of the pre-existing structures explains the non-optimal orientation of the younger fault segments at a shallower level, with the former acting as kinematic attractors for the latter faults. This study demonstrates how a detailed fault kinematic analysis can help to decipher the effect of multi-layered mechanical stratigraphy and structural inheritance on the spatial evolution of individual flexure-induced faults.