LITERATURE REVIEW

BEN CRAVEN - 200458149

BACKGROUND
Between 2004 and 2012, 33% of the UKs saleable coal was extracted from the East Ayrs hire area of southern Scotland (East Ayrshire Council 2012). East Ayrshire lies within the Midland Valley, a NE-SW striking structure that crosses the width of the country, bound by the Highland Boundary Fault on the northern flank, and the Southern Uplands Fault on the other (Knipe & Needham 1986). The development of this graben perhaps reflects underling faults from the Iapetus Suture and corresponding Caledonian Orogeny (Cameron & Stephenson 1985; Floyd & Stiven 1991), but the oldest rocks found within the Midland Valley are of Tournaisian age (Waters et al. 2012) indicating that the basin began to open in the Early Carboniferous. The sediments that fill the basin are predominantly of fluvio-deltaic and shallow shelf-sea origins (Browne et al. 1999).

STRUCTURAL EVOLU TION OF THE MIDLAND VALLE Y

In 1960, Thomas George proposed a model for the structural evolution of the Midland Valley of Scotland. He suggested the feature was a rift valley graben with NW-SE extension (Underhill, Monaghan & Browne 2008). This model was expanded by Leeder in 1982 when he proposed N-S back-arc extension and late thermal subsidence had produced the variety of Carboniferous basins across the British Isles (e.g. Bowland, Northumberland, and Solway). However, Stedman (1998) and Haszeldine (1988) did not agree with Leeders interpretation of the N -S striking structures found in the Midland Valley and instead proposed a model of E-W extension perhaps, said Gibbs in 1990, controlled by linked listric normal faults and steeply dipping transfer faults. Taking the model of transfer faults, theories by Read (1988), McRoss (1988) and Rippon et al. (1996) used both dextral and sinistral slip to explain the geometries and offsets they saw in their studies. The crustal structure of the Midland Valley was unknown for such a long due to the lack of seismic information available in the area. The best available, and still one of the only deep-crust surveys is the 1974 L.I.S.P.B. survey (Bamford 1979). The interpretation of this is shown in Figure 1. However in 2003, JD Ritchie et al. published a paper within which commercially available seismic data from the Firth of Forth was analysed. The groups findings were that dip-slip, oblique-slip, and strike-slip fault movements all play parts in the development of the Midland Valley. Perhaps not a startling result in itself, but with better data came better interpretations of stress fields and syn-tectonic sediment timings. The most recent paper to look at the Midland Valley is by Caldwell & Young and from 2013. They propose three main sets of faults in the area that can be linked to two major tectonic events, due to proto-Variscan stresses from the Late Devonian: back-arc subsidence during proto-Tethys closure, then compression during the closure of the Ural Ocean (Figure 2). As previously expressed, it was Ritchie et al. (2003) who looked at faulting in the Firth of Forth. Although the authors acknowledge that they only analysed a small subset of the Midland Valley they propose that their study can be roughly correlated across the length of the structure. This, however, is opposed to the views of Caldwell & Young (2013) that propose simply two main stages of tectonic activity. Cardwell & Young acknowledge in their paper that the history of the Midland Valley is extremely complex and authors have attempted to untangle it for the past 30 years. As various stress fields have affected the British Isles overprinting of various tectonic styles has resulted in a complex polyphase tectoni c history

of extension, transtension, transpression and inversion (Macdonald & Fettes 2007; Caldwell & Young 2013). Figure 2 shows the interpretation of the structural evolution of the British Isles followed by Caldwell & Young, modifying the models proposed by Coward (1993). Figure 3 shows a wider area of the tectonic framework (Blakely 2011).

FIGURE 1: THE DEEP CRUSTAL STRUCTURE OF THE MIDLAND VALLEY. AFTER BAMFORD, 1979

FIGURE 2: STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION OF SCOTLAND, WITH FOCUS ON THE MIDLAND VALLEY. BLACK ARROWS SHOW PLATE MOVEMENTS, LIGHT ARROWS SHOW THE PROPOSED MOVEMNT OF THE NORTHERN EUROPEAN BLOCK (NEB) (A) DINANTIAN. NE TRENDING SINISTRAL STRIKE-SLIP. (B) SILESIAN. COMPRESSION FROM NE, DEXTRAL MOVEMENT ON NE-TRENDING FAULTS AND SINISTRAL MOVEMENT ON NW-TRENDING FAULT. NOTE THAT THE REGIONAL STRESS REGIME IS SET UP TO PREFER STRIKE-SLIP FAULTS, BUT THERE MAY BE NORMAL/REVERSE FAULTING ON A SMALLER SCALE. FROM CALDWELL & YOUNG, 2013

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FIGURE 3: PALAEOGEOGRAPHIC RECONTRUCTIONS FROM THE PENNSYLVANIAN (DINANTIAN) [LEFT] AND FROM THE MISSISSIPPIAN (SILESIAN) [RIGHT]. FROM RON BLAKELY, 2011.

AYRSHIRE IN THE CARBONIFEROUS

During the Carboniferous, the Midland Valley lay in a wet equatorial climate, as shown in Figure 3, ideal for the formation of tropical swamps- a perfect coal -forming environment (Browne et al. 1999). Sediment distribution in the Ayrshire coalfields appears to mainly controlled by periodically-moving NEtrending faults due to regional subsidence (Hooper 2013). Additionally, because no alluvial fan features have been found at the basin margins (e.g. the Southern Uplands Fault) it is inferred that accommodation roughly kept pace with sedimentation (Hooper 2013). This subsidence is assumed to be punctuated, explaining the presence of Yoredale cyclothems within the Mid-Late Carboniferous lithologies (Browne et al. 1999).

FIGURE 4: STRUCTURAL STYLES IN THE MIDLAND VALLEY. FROM HOOPER, 2013

Importantly to this project, recent authors have suggested that the synclines in the coal field are a later feature as they show no hinge thickening (Hooper 2013). They are likely related to the far-field Variscan stress regime (Corfield & Gawthorpe 1996).

FAULTING STYLES AND EXPECTED GEOMETRIES

As Frodsham & Gayer express in their 1999 paper, it is remarkable that very little research has been done into the nature of structural deformation in coal seams. No papers look specifically into the coal deformation within the Midland Valley, but the regional deformation style can certainly be understood. The Early Carboniferous foreland of the Variscan orogenic belt that affects the majority of the British Isles is characterised by a system of fault-bounded structural highs (De Paola et al. 2005). This includes the structural highs of the Southern Uplands Terrane and the Grampian Terrane (Armstrong & Owen 2001). Thus the model shown in Figure 5 may show some of the regional-scale features on crustal-scale crosssection through the Midland Valley. It may be that these can be projected onto the 1974 LISPB survey in Figure 1.

FIGURE 5: GRABEN SUBSIDENCE WITH COMPLEMENTARY ELASTIC UPBENDING. FROM BOTT, 1976

On a more local scale, the first paper to investigate the linked faults in the Midland Valley was published in 1990 by Alan Gibbs. Here, linked faults from the Saquhar Basin (slightly to the East of the project study area) were modelled to produce a variety of exemplar structures that may form in such an extensional/strike-slip tectonic setting. A more advanced continuation of this modelling is shown in Figure 7 after Wu et al. (2009).

FIGURE 6: COMPOSITE CARTOON MODEL OF LINKED FAULTS IN A STRIKE-SLIP/EXTENSIONAL SETTING. FROM GIBBS, 1990

FIGURE 7: A TRANSTENSIONAL PULL-APART BASIN MODELLED IN A SAND-BOX. AFTER WU ET AL., 2009

On a smaller scale still, Li (2001) published data from the Pingdingshan coalfield, northern China where compressive stresses have affected coal seams. Although the Midland Valley is extensional/strike-slip the style of inter-bed shear deformation may well be similar.

FIGURE 8: DIAGRAMMATIC ILLUSTRATION OF STRUCTURES THAT CAN BE FOUND WITHIN A SINGLE SHEARED COAL BED. ALTHOUGH THIS IS FROM A COMPRESSIVE REGIME IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THE DUCTILE STYLE OF DEFORMATION COAL MAY EXPERIENCE. FROM LI, 2001

CONCLUSION
To conclude, the formation of the Midland Valley is very complicated due to multiple stages and progressive rotations of stress fields. On the whole it is strike-slip with a transtensional component to create a graben structure. The deposition within the basin is of Carboniferous age, mostly deltaics and shallow water sediments that were laid down into the opening basin during periodic rifting. The coal in the area was deposited in swampy conditions that were able to exist due to Britains proximity to the equator. Deformation within the coal is complex, however on a regional scale the beds should hopefully deform in a predictable manner.

REFERENCES
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APPENDIX

FIGURE 9: CHART OF LITHOLOGIES, AGES, BGS CODES, PALAEGEOGRPHY ANF TECTONIC MOVEMENTS. COMPILED FROM BROWNE (1999), RITCHIE ET AL. (2003), HOOPER (2013), CALDWELL & YOUNG (2013), CAMERON & STEPHENSON (1985)