Hannah Suttill

I'm a 2nd year research student in the Grant Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Edinburgh working on the 'Sedimentology and Structure during growth of the Balkan Fold-and-Thrust belt in Eastern Bulgaria', supervised by Professor John Underhill & Dr Hugh Sinclair with Richard Bunt & James Peck of Melrose Resources Ltd.

Follow the link to see a recent poster produced for the School of GeoSciences 2nd year PhD presentations...*Research Summary Poster*

I've also recently done a period of work on the evolution of glacial lakes along the Upper Indus River Valley in Ladakh in the Himalayas - please check out the "sabbatical research" page on the left.

To email me, please use the link at the bottom of this page.

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2006 Graduate School Talk Abstract

Development of the Balkan Fold-and-Thrust Belt Retro-Thrust wedge: evidence from the Western Black Sea and Eastern Bulgaria

Mountain belts are inherently asymmetric, defined by the sense of subduction.  The resultant orogen can be divided into a pro- and retro-wedge with the retro-wedge overlying the overthrust plate.  Modelling suggests that retro-wedges and their neighbouring foreland basins have very specific controls on orogen development that have not previously been recognised.

This study on the Balkan Mountains is synthesising data from 3D seismic surveys and core from the Western Black Sea, with outcrop fieldwork in Eastern Bulgaria, to investigate orogenic and petroleum systems development during orogenic evolution.  In addition to thorough basin analysis, it will be possible to obtain high resolution timings of thrusting and associated sedimentation through a combination of sequence stratigraphy, sedimentological study and biostratigraphy.  The high quality and availability of data is unique for this tectonic setting and will potentially provide insight into other retro-wedge systems such as the Aquitaine Basin.

The east-west trending Balkans are the collisional product of the late Mesozoic/early Cenozoic Alpine Orogeny.  Situated north of the deformation front, the Stara Planina Frontal Thrust, and south of the Moesian Platform, is the Palaeocene-Mid Eocene, deep-water Dolna-Kamchia Basin.  These components together comprise the retro-thrust wedge and foreland basin of the Hellenide-Balkan belt, situated on the overthrust plate of the northerly-plunging Eurasian-Anatolian subduction zone.  Subsequent to the growth of the Balkans, the extensional opening of the Black Sea by end Miocene transected the E-W trending fold-and-thrust belt structures by a series of N-S trending normal faults.  Consequently, the well-exposed Bulgarian coastline is oriented perpendicular to strike of the Balkans thus providing an ideal opportunity for detailed onshore study across the entire retro-wedge.

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