The East Shetland Basin is a superb natural laboratory in which to study the role that normal fault growth and linkage has in determining petroleum prospectivity. Use of several high density 3D seismic volumes and over 250 boreholes permits key aspects of the Late Jurassic rift and its Permo-Triassic precursor to be analysed and its role on hydrocarbon trap formation, reservoir distribution and migration determined. The regional interpretation has revealed the generation of a North Sea archipelago of Upper Jurassic islands, the role of relay ramps in controlling syn-rift sediment dispersal patterns and the impact of normal faults of the later episode crossing and offsetting those generated by the earlier phase. The uplift, erosion and meteoric flushing of Upper Jurassic and older strata within the exposed fault blocks could potentially have huge consequences for the Brent play by enhancing reservoir properties and hence, help identify new play opportunities down-dip of major structures. Fault control on sediment dispersal can also be documented in a more localized study on the Cladhan Field, the site of a pronounced basin-margin relay ramp. This recent discovered set of syn-rift density flows illustrates how the development and distribution of depositional gradients and transport pathways form subtle play types. The Cladhan area is just one of several locations throughout the East Shetland Basin where the interaction of multiple rift phases is influential in the structural feedback after the Upper Jurassic rifting event. The delicate interaction and reactivation of underlying structural trends creates a series of multi-tiered fault block systems which can define several aspects of a petroleum system, depending upon the strike, polarity and level of reactivation of faults from one rift to another. The observations of fault growth and linkage in the Northern North Sea may provide generic lessons that help in determining petroleum prospectivity in other hydrocarbon rift basins (e.g. E. Africa and the N. Atlantic seaboard of North America).

This thesis examines how the growth, interaction and linkage of normal faults, and the broader structural styles within rift basins, provide first-order controls upon syn-rift sediment routing and the development of coeval syn-rift stratigraphy. To achieve this, this thesis integrates observations from an area of active extension, alongside the stratigraphic record of an ancient rift basin. The former allows greater insight into sediment erosion, transport and preservation processes during rifting, whereas the latter represents the net depositional history, hence permitting a reconstruction of rift tectono-stratigraphic evolution. Recent advances in the understanding of landscape response to active faulting, have focused predominantly on large-scale rift provinces or where fault segments are widely-spaced across-strike (~15-30 km). As such, the neotectonic portion of this study integrates field and digitial terrain analysis to examine the geomorphic response to active faulting across the Perachora Peninsula (Gulf of Corinth, Central Greece), an uplifting, faulted-terrace setting. Here, the across-strike fault-spacing is small (~2-3 km), allowing fault segments to interact across-strike, and landscape evolution to be driven by a complex configuration of perched, intermittent and marine base-levels. These base-levels have a propensity to switch, with implications for sediment-routing and hanging-wall stratigraphic development. The preservation potential of sub-aerial syn-rift landscapes and basin-fill is extremely low in settings such as Perachora, due to the aggressive headward cannibalisation driven by ongoing tectonic uplift and short downstream distances to terminal base level. The subsurface stratigraphic study examines the Triassic-Jurassic syn-rift stratigraphy of the Danish Central Graben, an area displaying lateral variability in the original thickness and mobility of Late Permian Zechstein evaporites along-strike of the bounding Coffee-Soil Fault System. This setting enables a direct comparison between evaporite-influenced and non- evaporite-influenced rifting at a range of scales. By integrating observations of variability in structural style, with a systematic seismic-stratigraphic analysis of the syn-rift interval, the study documents how interactions between normal fault evolution and mobile evaporites influence: i) the variability in rift basin structural style; ii) the development of stratal geometries; and iii) the nature and location of depositional systems. On a basin-wide scale, the evaporite-influenced rift portions display more prominent fault-related and evaporite-related folding, which in turn controls syn-rift deposition, along with variable degrees of decoupling of basement and cover fault and fold systems. Focusing on the evaporite-influenced Coffee-Soil Fault System, variations in the locations and rates of accommodation generated by both load-driven withdrawal of evaporites up the hanging-wall dip-slope, and fault-related subsidence, provide a critical, and hitherto neglected control upon dip- and strike-oriented variability in hanging-wall stratigraphic architecture. Conceptual models for the development of hanging-wall stratigraphy, incorporating the influence of sediment supply rates upon load-induced evaporite mobilisation, provide a framework which may be used in the analysis of evaporite-influenced border fault systems worldwide. Overall, the findings of this thesis have implications for understanding the controls on spatial and temporal variability in structural style, sediment routing and syn-rift stratigraphic evolution in rift basins. In particular, the study highlights that to determine a deeper understanding of the interactions which determine the evolution of syn-rift stratigraphy, it is essential to examine basin processes in both modern and ancient rift settings, as well as at a range of scales.

The late Miocene Cedar Springs fault system is a high-angle transpressional system in the Silverwood Lake area, western San Bernardino Mountains, southern California. This thesis presents the study of oblique-slip faults with modest amounts of slip, which represent the early stages of fault development by using slip as a proxy for maturity. A structural and geochemical characterization is provided for six fault zones ranging from 39 m of slip to 3.5 km of offset in order to develop a model of fault zone geometry and composition. Basic geometric and kinematic results are provided for an additional 29 small-displacement (cm- to m-scale) faults. The main faults of this study can be divided into the fault core composed of sheared clay gouge and micro breccia, the primary damage zone made up of chemically altered rock with microstructural damage and grain-size reduction, and the secondary damage zone, which is characterized by an increased fracture density relative to the host rock. Although there appears to be a general increase in fault core thickness with increasing slip, the correlation is insignificant when analyzing all faults. Both the primary and secondary damage zones appear to thicken with increased slip on the main fault. Overall, the structure and composition of the faults studied here are similar to those of larger strike-slip and reverse faults. This indicates that the fault core develops early in a fault's history. Subsequent slip appears to be focused along these narrow zones, with some deformation accumulating in the damage zone. Whole-rock geochemical analyses typically show a reduction in the abundance of Na, Al, K, and Ca in the fault core and primary damage zone relative to the host rock. This indicates enhanced fluid-rock interactions in these zones. Calculations of the energy consumed to produce the chemical alteration in the fault core indicate that a considerable amount of the total earthquake energy may be lost to alteration. This thesis concludes that fault processes are similar throughout the different stages of development, and the study of relatively small-displacement faults can therefore be used to understand fault evolution through time and the processes of larger faults in the brittle crust.

A new apatite (U-Th)/He (AHe) dataset from subvertical transects collected in the Teton and Gallatin Ranges in the Teton-Yellowstone region provides insight for the slip history and length of the Teton fault. Along the northernmost segment of the Teton fault, inverse thermal history modeling of AHe data from Eagles Rest Peak yield a ~9 Ma age for onset of fault slip. This age supports previous interpretations that Mount Moran may be the true center of the Teton fault. This refined interpretation coupled with lengthdisplacement fault scaling analysis and previous estimates of total fault displacement (~6 km) indicates that the Teton fault may extend 50-90 km north of Mount Moran. However, this new data precludes the possibility that the Teton and East Gallatin faults represent the same structure. Yet, because these systems share a similar structure trend and initial slip ages (13 Ma and 16 Ma, respectively), they may still be related at a larger scale. To the south, the Teewinot transect yields the oldest onset age of ~32 Ma, however a >500 m vertical data gap in this transect leads us to cautiously interpret the results of this model, particularly as this age conflicts with four other transects along-strike.