Evidence of Some Major Structures Underlying the Douala Sedimentary Sub-Basin: West African Coastal Basin

摘要

Gravity data have been processed in the Douala sedimentary sub-basin in a section consisting of a set of 116 gravity data points located between latitudes 3°03'N and 4°06'N and longitudes 9°00'E and 10°00'E. The established Bouguer anomaly fields and the Residual anomaly fields, extracted by upward continuation at an optimum height of 30 km, were both characterized by considerably high positive anomalies. These anomalies showed many ring-like positive gravity anomaly contour lines in the study region. Gravity gradients were analysed using the multi-scale horizontal derivative of the vertical derivative (MSHDVD) method, and this excluded the existence of fault lines across this region. Amplitude spectrum was used to estimate the potential field source at a depth of about 4.8 km. The ideal body theory capable of handling sparse data contaminated with noise was applied along a 50.2 km WWS-EEN profile to determine a density contrast of 0.266 g/cm3. Using these results as constraints, 2.5 D modelling carried out along this profile presented two major blocks with density contrast of 0.266 g/cm3. The first block is probably an intrusive igneous body with a density of about 2.77 g/cm3 , having an average thickness of about 26 km with its top and base lying at depths of about 4.25 km and 30.25 km respectively. The second block is likely a pillar of igneous material, located at a depth of about 10.77 km with a density of about 2.77 g/cm3 whose base goes deep down beyond the crust-mantle boundary. These results support previous findings that there are similarities between the Douala sedimentary sub-basin and the coastal sedimentary basin of Mauritania-Senegal and thus foster the suggestions of a more extensive movement that would have affected the whole of the West African coast.