Paschal Amaechi

Paschal Amaechi is a PhD candidate at the Western Cape University (Cape Town, South Africa) who is visiting Petrolab in 2020. His research focuses on strain partitioning within MTD fold‐thrust belts and implications for recurrence mass‐wasting on the Orange Basin. This basin, which was formed during the Gondwana breakup and associated South Atlantic opening in the late Jurassic, is adjudged to be the youngest basin in the southern African offshore basins. One of the stages of evolution of the basin during the Cretaceous was characterized by wide instability and development of growth and thrust fault systems. Interest has been growing both from the academia and the exploration industry on these structural systems and the influence on seafloor stability. As part of Paschal's project, he aims to study the fold‐thrust belts in the orange basin for identifying conditions and factors that contribute to the generation of submarine slide blocks and other MTDs. 

Paschal is mentored in collaboration with Dr. Yizhaq Makovsky and Dr. Mimonitu Opuwari.

The importance and geological significance of mass failures and gravity-driven mass wasting processes in passive continental margins and in the deep-water settings, in general, is increasingly gaining attention from the scientific community. A critical review of the deep-water collapse features inherent along the continental passive margins of the Southwestern Orange Basin (South Africa) will be conducted using high resolution 3D seismic data. Seismic geomorphological techniques will also be employed in examining four distinctive upper Cretaceous post-rift Mass Transported Deposit (MTD) packages in the basin. Each of the identified MTDs will be characterized based on the presence of geomorphic features such as grooves, scoured surfaces, hummocky relief, and glide tracks. The overall geometries and architecture of the mass-transport deposits will be analyzed on the 3D seismic section. Furthermore, kinematic indicators of the MTDs (the head-wall, translational and toe domains) will be ascertained in order to understand the direction, magnitude and mode of transport of the mass-wasting process. The kinematic indicators analyzed will be classified based on their locations at various parts of the MTD. Furthermore, variations in seafloor morphology above the studied MTD packages will be investigated to understand the link between thickening of the post MTD layers and small scale depressions.