THE IDENTIFICATION OF SYN-DEPOSITIONALLY-ACTIVE STRUCTURES IN THE COAL-BEARING UPPER CARBONIFEROUS OF GREAT-BRITAIN

The Upper Carboniferous coalfields of Great Britain occupy various tec tonic settings. Excellent data sets allow detailed analysis of any rel ationship between structure and the depositional patterns. Syn-deposit ional movement can be identified on a basin scale, and also at the sca le of individual faults. However, with the exception of the Scottish M idland Valley, definitive evidence for syn-depositional movement on sp ecific structures is relatively rare, and especially so in the English Pennine Basin. In particular, there is a general scarcity of detailed structural control on coal-depositional patterns. The environments in which coals formed would have been much more sensitive to subtle grou nd movements than the higher energy environments of the major channel belts. The precursor peats were widespread and commonly diachronous, a nd probably spanned around half the available time and space during We stphalian deposition across the Pennine Basin. The rarity of localized structural controls on coal patterns is therefore firm evidence of ra rity of specific syn-depositional faulting throughout the sedimentary volume. Using mining data mainly from the Pennine Basin and the Midlan d Valley, this account discusses examples of likely, and less likely s yn-depositional features, and proposes structural and sedimentological criteria for systematic assessment.