Basement controls upon basin development in the Caledonian foreland, NW Scotland

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Abstract
The Hebridean basins are part of a compartmentalized half‐graben developed in the hanging wall of the partially reactivated Outer Isles Fault. The importance of geological inheritance in the development of these basins can be demonstrated clearly using the widespread exposure of metamorphic basement around the basin margins. The basement structures have been analysed using thematically mapped Landsat images in conjunction with selective field studies. Results of such studies have been integrated with maps generated from the interpretation of offshore multichannel seismic reflection profiles to produce an architectural framework for basin development.It can be demonstrated that the principal basement faults originated in the early Proterozoic as mid‐crustal shear zones and that they have subsequently been partially reactivated during post‐Caledonian basin development beginning in the Carboniferous and probably also during an earlier period of basin development in the late Proterozoic (the Torridonian). It is the geometry of the pre‐existing basement structures that has controlled the three‐dimensional shape of the sedimentary basins and the spatial and temporal distribution of the basin fill.