Geology of Russia

Coordinates: 60°N 100°E / 60°N 100°E / 60; 100
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

60°N 100°E / 60°N 100°E / 60; 100

A topographic map of Russia with regions labeled.

The geology of Russia, the world's largest country, which extends over much of northern

orogenic (mountain) belts
.

Lena River. East of the Lena River there is the Verhoyansk-Chukotka collision zone, stretching to the Chukchi Peninsula
.

The orogens within Russia belong to the Baltic Shield, the Timanides, the Urals, the Altai Mountains, the Ural-Mongolian epipaleozoic orogen and the northwestern part of the Pacific orogeny. The country's highest mountains, the Caucasus, are confined to younger orogens.

East European craton

See also: White Sea Rift System

The European part of Russia lies on the East European platform, a region up to 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) wide covered by more than 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) of

Volgo-Uralia collided.[2]

Timan Ridge

Main article: Timanide Orogen

The

strikes northwest–southeast, extending from the settlement of Troitsko-Pechorsk to the Kanin Peninsula. This ridge can be correlated with outcrops on the Varanger Peninsula which together form the Timan-Varanger belt.[3]
The Timan-Varanger belt consists of
Cadomian orogeny in western Europe.[3]

Timan-Pechora Basin

Main article: Timan-Pechora Basin

The

sedimentary basin that lies between the Timan Ridge and the Urals foreland basin. The basin extends into the southern part of the Barents Sea and includes Kolguyev Island. It is covered by 6 to 12 kilometres (3.7 to 7.5 mi) of sediments that were deposited during a series of marine regression and transgression events from the Proterozoic to the Cenozoic. The eastern basin was deformed when the Ural mountains were formed.[4] The Basin is further divided into the Izhma-Pechora basin, Pechora-Kolva basin, Khoreiver basin and the Northern Pre-Urals.[5]

Volgo-Uralian Block

Main article:
Volgo-Uralia

The Volgo-Uralian Block is a basement of Archean craton covered by younger sediments,[6] making up the eastern third of the East European Craton. This crystalline basement is made up of amphibolite to granulite facies,[7] mostly forming domes. Granitoids deformed into gneisses are contained. The sedimentary rocks covering these domes are of Neoproterozoic to Phanerozoic age.[8]

Caucasus Mountains

Main article: Caucasus Mountains § Geology

The

metasedimentary Paleozoic rocks.[10]

Deformation outside the core has mostly taken place on the southern slopes of the mountains; however, there is some deformation on the North slopes. This deformation is differentiated on the north slopes from East to West.

Terek Basin.[11]

Caspian Basin

The

basins and platforms. It is divided into smaller basins, in the North, the North Caspian Basin. The north is a basin at the edge of the cratons to the north. It is composed of Paleozoic carbonate platforms.[12] The North Basin overlies a basement of European Craton.[13] Mesozoic and Tertiary sediments deposited by a variety of methods have covered the continental crust.[14]

Ural orogen

Main articles: Uralian orogeny and Ural Mountains § Geology

The

strike-slip movements during the orogeny caused the unusual straightness of the mountain chain.[16]

West Siberian basin

Main article: West Siberian petroleum basin
Western Siberian plain on a satellite map of North Asia.

The West Siberian basin lies between the Ural mountains and the Siberian craton to its east. It corresponds to the geographic region of the

rift structures of Triassic age buried beneath the basin fill: the Urengoy and the Khudosey rift. These rifts are mainly filled with Lower Triassic basic volcanic rocks.[20]

The West Siberian basin and its offshore portions in the

reserves of 360 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the basin.[20][21]

Yenisey fold belt

Main article: Yenisey Fold Belt

Dividing the Siberian craton from the West Siberian basin is the Yenisey fold belt, which extends about 700 kilometres (430 mi),[22] with NW-SE strike. This belt is divided into northern and southern regions by the Angara fault which has left slip.[23] Much of the rock was formed by Neoprotozoic accretion.[22]

North of the fault, the area is made up of thrust sheets[23] divided into three primarily Neoproterozoic terranes, the East Angara, Central Angara and the Isakov.[22] Each one overrides another, and volcanism is generally limited to the Central and Isakov terranes.[24] South of the fault are the Predivinsk terrane, made of island arc accretion, and the Angara-Kan micro-craton, which is sometimes considered separate from the fold belt.[25]

Siberian craton

Central Siberian Plateau's location in Asia.

The Siberian craton (or West-Siberian craton) coincides with the

Lena rivers. In the west it borders the West Siberian basin. The Yenisei-Katanga trough lies in the north. In the south lies the Central Asian fold belt, the Baikal rift and the Mongol-Okhotsk fold belt. The eastern border is the Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogenic system.[26][27]

The Siberian craton formed in the Precambrian and is largely covered by sedimentary and volcanic rocks of more recent age. Precambrian rocks are exposed in two distinct uplifts, the Anabar massif in the northeast and the Aldanian shield in the southeast.[19] Other basement outcrops include Olenyok, Sharyzhalgay and the raised Southern Yenisei horst.[28]

Basins include the Tunguska basin, the Vilui basin (Viluiskaya-Tunguska syncline), the Low-Angara (Angara-Lena trough) basin, and the Kan-Taseeva basin.[26]

The volcanically produced Siberian Traps, the largest flood basalts of the Phanerozoic (the last 539 million years), mantle about 40 percent of the Siberian craton.[19][29]

The Siberian craton is known for its large mineral resources. The town of Norilsk is the world's largest supplier of nickel. In 2011 one-fifth of the world's production of this metal came from Russia.[30]

Verhoyansk-Chukotka collision zone

Lena River
and Verkhoyansk Range (East Siberia).

The Verhoyansk-Chukotka collision zone is commonly divided into the Verhoyansk-Kolyma and the Novosibirsk-Chukotka (or Novosibirsk-Chukchi) orogens. It stretches from the Lena river in the west to the Chukchi Peninsula in the east.[31]

Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogen

The Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogen is composed of three parts: the Verkhoyansk

microcontinent collided with the Siberian craton the sedimentary stack of the Verhoyansk was folded and uplifted. Deformation took place between the Middle Jurassic and Upper Cretaceous.[33]

Novosibirsk-Chukotka orogen

The Novosibirsk-Chukotka orogen lies in the northeasternmost part of Russia on the Chukchi Peninsula and also is exposed on the island of New Siberia, Anzhu Islands. The orogen is composed of metamorphic basement rocks and cover made up of shallow water sediments, deposited between the Permian and the Triassic.[32] The Chukchi massif is an outcrop of Precambrian basement that stretches to the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. The Novosibirsk-Chukotka orogen is connected under the Chukchi Sea with the Brooks fold-and-thrust belt in Alaska.[31]

Central Asian Orogenic Belt

Main article: Central Asian Orogenic Belt

The Central Asian Orogenic Belt is an orogen that covers much of

Transbaikalia and Primorje orogens.[35]

Baikal-Stanovoy Region

The Baikal–Stanovoy region is commonly held to be caused by various factors to account for the differing structures throughout the region. The Baikal-Stanovoy seismic belt underlies the region and is a long thin activity region. Compressive stresses dominate the eastern Stanovoy Ranges, whereas the Baikal rift zone is an extension zone.[36]

Baikal Rift Zone

The

collision of the Indian subcontinent with Eurasia. Locally, there may be a mantle up-welling driving the extension.[38]

The area was originally characterized by Precambrian and Paleozoic northeast-southwest fold and thrust belts.[38] Volcanism began in the late Cretaceous in limited areas, but is mostly limited to the Miocene. It is also the age of sedimentary rocks in some basins, and the same series lasted into the Eocene.[39] Rifting resumed beginning in the Oligocene, and is commonly held to have increased since the middle Pliocene,[38] causing the formation of basins in the form of grabens.[40] The new rift structure may follow the Precambrian and Paleozoic faults.[41] Magmatic activity and rifting may also be independent events. Outside of the grabens basalt volcanics erupted from either end of the rift system during the uplift. The grabens mostly spread without releasing magma, except the Tunka depression.[40]

Dzhugdzhur and Stanovoy Ranges

The

Dzhugdzhur Range and Stanovoy Range are two eastern mountain ranges, where the Stonovoy is west of the Dzhugdzhur. Together the ranges make up a folded block structure, which first formed during the Archean and Proterozoic.[citation needed
]

The Stanovoy range is composed of

intrusions of granite, granodiorite, and diorite.[42] Seismic activity in the area is found in an east trending narrow zone,[36] called the Stanovoy strike-slip zone.[39] In the range, this belt is revealed by strike-slip displacement.[36] This left fault joins the Sea of Okhotsk to the Sakhalin deformation zones.[39] The belt formed by this zone extends to lake Baikal. The area is under compressive stresses.[36]

The Dzhugdzhur range has a basement formed out of a block which is from the early Proterozoic. It is sometimes considered part of the Aldan Shield.[43] It contains a late Archean granulite basement.[44] This basement can be broken into two sequences, the lower is primarily a plagiogneiss-enderbite, and the upper is made up of biotite and gneisses and garnets mixed with biotite.[43]

Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanic Belt

Map of the Okhotsk Plate and its neighbouring plates.

The Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanic Belt stretches 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) from the settlement of Okhotsk and runs along the northern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk. In the Shelikhov Gulf the belt runs northeast across most of the Chukchi Peninsula and then bends southeast and runs along the Pacific shoreline and terminates between the peninsula and St. Lawrence Island.[45]

The Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanic Belt was formed during the

oceanic plate under the Verkhoyansk-Chukotka orogen. The activity ended with the subduction moving farther east.[46]

Mineral resources found in the Okhotsk-Chukotka belt include gold, silver, tin and mercury.[46]

Pacific rim orogenies

Kuril Islands arc

The

Aleutian arc at the Kamchatka-Aleutian junction.[48]

West Kamchatka orogen

The West

Late Pliocene – Early Pleistocene in the central zone there developed large basaltic shield volcanoes. The Eastern Zone is characterized by current day volcanism (28 active volcanoes), coinciding with recent graben-like structures.[51]

Koryak orogeny

See also:
North Korea-Russia border

The Koryak fold and thrust belt consists of Lower Palaeozoic to Cenozoic terranes,[52] including early Carboniferous metamorphic terranes composed of folds, domes and shear zones with related high-pressure and low-temperature metamorphism.[52] The latest Jurassic to early Cretaceous (early Albian) thrusting was accompanied by dextral strike-slip faulting, and this formed imbricated (overlapping) fans of thrusts and folds with southeast vergence, creating a broken formation and serpentinite mélange. Some of the rocks were metamorphosed to blueschist. These structures are now overlapped by Upper Albian sedimentary rocks with an angular unconformity.[52] A late Cretaceous to Cenozoic deformational event characterized by significant

sinistral strike-slip displacement at higher crustal levels resulted in a new set of structures and the rotation of pre-existing structures.[52]
The latest Jurassic to early Cretaceous (early Albian) thrusting, and a late Cretaceous to Cenozoic deformational event correspond to assumed proto-Pacific plate motions based on
palaeomagnetic data.[52]

Sakhalin Cenozoic orogeny

See also: Sakhalin Island Arc
Sakhalin.

The Sakhalin Cenozoic orogeny is divided into East and West zones separated by the Central Sakhalin graben. Oil and gas are associated with the North Sakhalin basin, and there are coal-bearing deposits in mountains associated with the middle Miocene.

Geology of the Russian Arctic

Kara terrane

Taimyr Peninsula formed an independent microcontinent during the Paleozoic, the Kara Terrane or North Kara Terrane.[16] It consists of a Neoproterozoic basement, consisting of metamorphosed sedimentary rocks intruded by granites, which is covered by Upper Neoproterozoic and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks.[53] The North Kara Terrane collided with Siberia around the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary. This collision, which is related to the Caledonian orogeny, is called the Severnaya Zemlya episode.[53]

See also

References

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Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Geology of Russia.

External links

  • Geological maps of Russia Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, Federal Subsoil Use Agency (Rosnedra), A.P. Karpinsky All-Russian Geological Research Institute. (in Russian) Retrieved 2018-12-19.
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