Alpine Project

The Alpine Project

Abstract:

The Tamsweg basin has been filled during Karpathian times by conglomerates, gradually upward fining clastics, and finally silty lacustrine sediments. Pebbles of Upper-Austroalpine provenance were supplied from the N and NE, later from the W. Basin formation started within negative flower structures along the sinistral Seetal fault. Synsedimentary tectonic activity is indicated by local layers of cobbles at fault scarps, turbiditic lake sediments with slumps and coarse clastic mass flows, and ductile deformation of peat which has later been transformed into coal. Due to tectonic denudation of the Tauern window a rollover basin developed and sedimentation extended to the S onlapping onto a hilly paleosurface (Nock area). Dextral compressive reactivation of the Seetal fault at the beginning of the late Miocene induced basin inversion, in line with the end of lateral extrusion of the Eastern Alps. NNE-SSW directed compression and sinistral displacement is separating the basin since then into differentially uplifting blocks.

The aim of this investigation was to obtain a detailed picture of the tectonic evolution and  the sedimentary environments  of  the  basin.

Mapping the eastern part of the basin on the scale 1 : 10 000 revealed the stratigraphy of the sediments, their facies-conditions and their bedding. Detailed sedimentary investigations provided information on paleo­flow directions (imbricated pebbles), source areas (pebble assemblages) and facies areas (pebble grainsize). Faultplane-analysis and extension fractures-analysis were used for structural investigations. They give the relative age of individual paleostress fields.

(Zeilinger et al., 1999)

Diploma thesis:

Diploma thesis and Map: Das Tamsweger Tertiär: Fazies und Deformation eines intramontanen Beckens und seine regionale geodynamische Bedeutung. Tübingen 1997  (Please note: Adobe Acrobat Reader Format. Size ca. 14 MB).