Plate Tectonics Control on the Distribution and Formation of the Marine Potash Deposits
DOI:
Author:
Affiliation:

Clc Number:

Fund Project:

  • Article
  • |
  • Figures
  • |
  • Metrics
  • |
  • Reference
  • |
  • Related
  • |
  • Cited by
  • |
  • Materials
  • |
  • Comments
    Abstract:

    Supergene potash deposits mainly occur in epicontinental sea basins on the continental plates, and their formation is generally controlled by global plates including the scale, boundary characteristics, drift process, paleo latitude position and paleoclimate of plates during different geological intervals. Huge potash deposits with a large area and great thickness during Paleozoic often occurred in giant epicontinental basins with background of giant stable craton and belong to chemical rock type that potash deposits were formed in chemical depositional environment with carbonate. Mesozoic potash deposits were mostly concentrated within plate convergent areas characterized by Tethys realm where huge to large sized potash deposits or potash deposit groups were formed in smaller scale marine and marine terrestrial basins within small continental blocks, and belong to chemical rock type and clastic rock type that potash deposits were formed in clastic depositional environment with carbonate. Cenozoic potash deposits were dominantly distributed in rift basins occurred along the margin or in interior of continental plates, and can be formed in marine, nonmarine environments or in transitional environment. Whereas, typical terrestrial potash deposits often occurred in interior of continental plates. From the perspective of the forming ages of potash deposits, the formation models of potash deposits had encountered a huge switch, that is, giant stable craton types formed during Paleozoic, plate convergent (ie.Tethys realm) types did during Mesozoic and plate rifting type did in Cenozoic, respectively, and aimed the Quaternary, almost all the potash deposits around the world were typically formed in terrestrial environments. Accordingly, the provenance for potash formation in basins also differed from Paleozoic to Quaternary. Seawater during Paleozoic was the main source for potash deposits in marine basin within stable cratons, and during Mesozoic the nonmarine materials (eg, deep fluids caused by volcanic activities) were probably another potassium sources beside of seawater for potash deposits of small blocks in Tethy realm. Under the rift environments during Cenozoic, potassium supplies were often the mixture of marine and nomarine materials, in some case even were dominated by nomarine materials. From Paleozoic through Cenozoic, the reserves of potash deposits progressively decreased with the decreasing in space scale of basins. Chinese small continental blocks are portion of global plate component and their movements were subject to the global plate tectonism, potash formation in these small blocks therefore should be controlled by the regularity of global potash formation. Understanding of regularity of global potash formation will be helpful for studys of potash formation regularity of Chinese continental blocks and further potash exploration.

    Reference
    Related
    Cited by
Get Citation

LIU Chenglin, ZHAO Yanjun, FANG Xiaomin, LvFenglin, WANG Licheng, YAN Maodu, ZHANG Hua, DING Ting.2015. Plate Tectonics Control on the Distribution and Formation of the Marine Potash Deposits[J]. Acta Geologica Sinica,89(11):1893-1907

Copy
Share
Article Metrics
  • Abstract:
  • PDF:
  • HTML:
  • Cited by:
History
  • Received:
  • Revised:
  • Adopted:
  • Online: November 02,2015
  • Published: