Structural Map of the South China Sea - PDF

Note : This map is subjected to an agreement license, available under the “Downloads” tab, that has to be signed and returned at the address ccgm@sfr.fr before reception.

This map is also available for purchase in paper version on our catalogue.

This structural map of the South China Sea is based on a large amount of industrial and academic data and aims at displaying the main structures and lithologies which have played a key role in the formation and the evolution of the South China Sea.

The color code has been designed in order to facilitate the offshore/onshore correlation of the structural units. The basement rocks older than the Jurassic have not been differentiated and an effort has been put on the Mesozoic granitoids and older magmatic and metamorphic rocks as well as the Cenozoic volcanic edifices onshore and offshore which have been deposited both on the margins and the sea-floor.

The main crustal structural entities have been distinguished as thick continental basement, stretched continental crust, inferred zones of exhumed mantle (even below the post-rift sediments), volcanic arc crust in the Philippines, and oceanic crust. Sedimentary bodies onshore and offshore are wedges, platforms and basins, as well as the extent of the Mesozoic marine environment. The age of the crust in the basins other than the South China Sea (Celebes Sea, Sulu Sea) is not specified. Rifted Cenozoic basins are underlined and shown transparent above rifted structures. Instead of showing the picks or the models of the debated magnetic anomalies, the map shows the non-controversial magnetic anomalies and emphasizes on the structural fabrics of the sea-floor.

The faults represented on the map are those associated with the crustal extension since the beginning of the Late Cretaceous. Other faults, which may appear crossing or paralleling the rifting faults are reverse or thrust faults which mostly took place during the Middle Miocene and the Pliocene. The thin red faults emphasize the shallow-rooted faults which characterized the gravity tectonics affecting the thick Miocene deltas of the South China Sea.

A synthetic cross-section is provided based on international published literature.
This cross section provides a comprehensive image of a hyper extended margin developed in a batholith.

The legend of the Map can be downloaded here

Basemap SRTM30+ v1.0, released in November 2004, see http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus

Altimetry from SRTM and GEBCO databases

doi:10.14682/2017STRUCTUSCS