Erratic shortening from balanced cross-sections of the western Himalayan foreland basin: causes and implications for basin evolution

Balanced cross-sections from the western Himalayan foreland foothill belt r eveal a variation in shortening amounts from 22 to 71.3% over a lateral dis tance of similar to 85 km. The large variation may be attributed to the fac t that the method of cross-section balancing considers the initial layering as horizontal, which is an unlikely situation in foreland basins. Simple t rigonometric relationships are used to minimize the error in shortening est imates. However, the suggested corrections could not be applied to the Hima layan foreland basin because of unavailability of the required data on init ial basin geometry. The study also indicates that shortening rates for the area based on these shortening amounts cannot be used for earthquake predic tion. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.