Horst (geology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article refers to the geological form. For other uses, see Horst.
In physical geography and geology, a horst is the raised fault block bounded by normal faults. The raised block is a portion of the Earth's crust that has remained stationary while the land has sunk on either side of it or has been crushed by a mountain range against it.
The Vosges and Black Forest are examples of the former, the Table, Jura and the Dôle mountains are results of the latter. The word is also applied to those larger areas, such as the Russian plain, Arabia, India and Central South Africa, where the continent remains stable, with horizontal table-land stratification, in distinction to folded regions such as the Eurasian chains.
"Horst" is the German word for 'eyrie', the nest of a bird (such as an eagle) that is located on a high place such as a cliff.
[edit] Horsts and hydrocarbon exploration
In many rift basins around the world, the vast majority of discovered hydrocarbons are found in conventional traps associated with horsts. For example, much of the petroleum found in the Sirte Basin in Libya (of the order of tens of billions of barrels of reserves) are found on large horst blocks such as the Zelten Platform and the Dahra Platform and on smaller horsts such as the Gialo High and the Bu-Attifel Ridge.
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- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
