A Deterministic Evaluation of eismic Fidelity using Velocity Modeling ...

sediments is also important because it modifies the movement of salt and the movement
of salt will alter sediment deposition.
One of the more challenging aspects to describing the geology of Vinton Dome is
properly identifying the cross-cutting relationships between regional-scale structures and
salt bodies. Unraveling the relative timing of the structures is necessary to understanding
the relationship between faulting and emplacement of salt bodies.
The Neogene was a period of significant salt tectonics, growth fault development, and
maximum clastic deposition along the outer shelf and upper slope that occurred in the
northern Gulf of Mexico Basin (Lowerie, 1994). All of these processes took place
synchronously (Lowerie, 1994), possibly linking them.
2.2 Basin Formation
Bounding the Gulf of Mexico Basin to the east is the Florida Carbonate Platform, to the
south by the Yucatan Carbonate Platform (Figure 2) (Ewing, 1991), to the west by the
Chiapas massif, the Sierra Madra Oriental, and the eastern edge of the Coahuila Platform
in Mexico. Northern limits are defined, from west to east, by the structural limits of the
Marathon uplift, the Ouachita orogenic belt, the Ouachita Mountains as delineated by the
Mexia/Talco fault, the Central Mississippi deformed belt, and the southern extent of the
Appalachian Mountains. There is no distinct structural limit to define the boundary
between the southern Appalachians to the Atlantic Ocean.
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