Tectonic subsidence

Tectonic subsidence is the sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale, relative to crustal-scale features or the geoid.

Three mechanisms are common in the tectonic environments in which subsidence occurs: extension, cooling and loading.

[5] The adding of weight by sedimentation from erosion or orogenic processes, or loading, causes crustal depression and subsidence.

[2] Multiple hypotheses have been introduced to explain this slow, long-lived subsidence:[2] long-term cooling since the breakup of Pangea, interaction of deformation around the edge of the basin and deep earth dynamics.

Successful rifting forms a spreading center[2] like a mid-ocean ridge, which moves progressively further from coastlines as oceanic lithosphere is produced.

As rifting proceeds, listric fault systems form and further subsidence occurs, resulting in the creation of an ocean basin.

Moderate strike-slip faults create extensional releasing bends and opposing walls pull apart from each other.

Extensional faulting due to relative motion between the accretionary prism and the volcanic arc may occur.

Foreland basins are flexural depressions created by large fold thrust sheets that form toward the undeformed continental crust.