Salt Surface Structures

Salt surface structures are extensions of salt tectonics that form at the Earth surface when diapirs or salt sheets pierce through the overlying rock strata, occurring wherever salt deposits exist, including cratonic basins, synrift basins, passive margins and collisional margins, environments where large volumes of water once collected and evaporated to leave behind salt and other evaporite beds. When pressure differences arise, such as from additional sediment accumulating nearby, the salt beds, which behave as a fluid under pressure, deform into new bodies; when these bodies form subhorizontal or moderately dipping structures over a younger stratigraphic unit, they are called allochthonous salt bodies or salt surface structures.