Basin Research (2006) 18, 51–84, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2117.2006.00285.

Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay

basins of Southeast Asia: a coupled model
incorporating lower-crustal flow in response to
post-rift sediment loading
n1
Christopher K. Morley and Rob Westawaywz
n
Department of Petroleum Geoscience, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam,
Brunei
wFaculty of Mathematics and Computing,The Open University, Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
zSchool of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

ABSTRACT
Two Early Cenozoic rifts in Southeast Asia (beneath the Pattani and Malay basins) experienced only
limited upper- crustal extension (b
1.5); yet very thick post-rift sequences are present, with 6^
12 km of Late Cenozoic terrestrial and shallow-marine sediment derived from adjacent sources.
Conventional post-rift backstripping requires depth-dependent lithospheric thinning by b 5 2^4 to
explain these tremendous thicknesses.We assess an alternative explanation for this post-rift
subsidence, involving lower- crustal £ow from beneath these basins in response to lateral pressure-
gradients induced by the sediment loads and the negative loads arising from the erosion of their
sediment sources.We calculate that increased rates of erosion in western Thailand in the Early
Miocene placed the crust in a non- steady thermal state, such that the depth (and thus, the pressure) at
the base of the brittle upper crust subsequently varied over time. Following such a perturbation,
thermal and mass- £ux steady- state conditions took millions of years to re- establish. In the
meantime, the lateral pressure-gradient caused net out£ow of lower crust, thinning the crust beneath
the depocentre by several kilometres (mimicking the isostatic e¡ect of greater crustal extension
having occurred beforehand) and thickening it beneath the sediment source region.The local
combination of hot crust and high rates of surface processes, causing lower-crustal £ow to be
particularly vigorous and thus making its e¡ects more readily identi¢able, means that the Pattani and
Malay basins represent a set of conditions di¡erent from basins in many other regions. However,
lower- crustal £ow induced by surface processes will also occur to some extent, but less recognisably,
in many other continental crustal provinces, but its e¡ects may be mistaken for those of other
processes, such as larger-magnitude stretching and/or depth-dependent stretching.

INTRODUCTION tectonic settings, including backarc, foredeep and post-

rift, are represented. Finally, most of the subsidence is not
Many deep, rapid- subsidence Cenozoic sedimentary ba-
associated with displacement on major normal or strike^
sins are found in Southeast Asia (see the review in Hall &
slip faults. These basins include the following (Figs 1 and
Morley, 2004; Fig. 1). They, ¢rst, contain Cenozoic sedi- 2): the Yinggenhai basin, Vietnam (which has up to 17 km
ment thicknesses up to 18 km (Pivnik et al., 1998; Metivier
of Cenozoic sediment; Clift & Sun, in press); the Kutai ba-
et al., 1999), with maximum subsidence rates in the main
sin, SW Borneo; the Central basin, Myanmar and the Pat-
depocentres of many tenths of 1mm a  1, and in some
tani and Malay basins in the Gulf of Thailand, which are
cases above 1mm a  1, sustained for many millions of
the subject of the present study. Located within the young
years. Second, present-day geothermal gradients are high
continental core of Southeast Asia (Sundaland), these ba-
to very high (30^75 1C km  1; Table 1). Third, a variety of
sins have developed during the Cenozoic on crust that
formed as a result of accretion of microplates during the
Correspondence: Christopher K. Morley, Department of Petro - Mesozoic (e.g. Packham, 1996). The combination of young
leum Geoscience, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Tunku Link continental lithosphere, complex and prolonged Cenozoic
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam, Brunei. E-mail:
crustal deformation, hot crust, and tropical weathering has
chrissmorley@gmail.com
1
Present address: PTT Exploration and Production, 555 Vibha- produced much thicker sedimentary sequences than are
vadi-Rangsit Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok, Thailand. typical for basins worldwide (Hall & Nichols, 2002; Hall &

r 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 51

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

Fig. 1. Location map of super-deep basins in Southeast Asia, modi¢ed from Morley (2002).

Table 1. Geothermal gradients in sedimentary basins of Southeast Asia

Basin c ( 1C km  1) Nature of underlying crust

Fang 75 Continental crust, northern Thailand

Central Sumatra 61 Continental crust in volcanic arc setting
Gulf of Thailand 50 Continental crust
South Sumatra 49 Continental crust in volcanic arc setting
North Sumatra 47 Continental crust in volcanic arc setting
Sunda 46 Continental crust
NW Java 46 Continental crust in volcanic arc setting
Malay 45 Continental crust, western South China Sea
Central Luconia 43 Thinned (?) continental crust of passive margin, western Borneo
Balingian 41 Thinned (?) continental crust of passive margin, western Borneo
West Natuna 38 Continental crust, western South China Sea
Penyu 38 Continental crust, western South China Sea
Barito 36 Southern Borneo, continental crust
South Andaman 33 Continental - thinned continental (passive margin) crust

c denotes the average geothermal gradient measured within each basin, from Hutchison (1996a). See Fig. 1 for locations of these basins.

52 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

Fig. 2. Cross- sections across the Pattani and Malay basins, modi¢ed from (a) Achalabhuti & Udom-Agsorn (1978); (b) and (c),
Watcharanantakul & Morley (2000); and (d), Madon et al. (1999). In (b), arrows mark the approximate stratigraphic position of the onset
of post-rift subsidence, as suggested by Wheeler & White (2000) (arrow 1) and Watcharanantakul & Morley (2000) (arrow 2).The actual
base of the post-rift section is now placed in the Late Oligocene (arrow 3). Note that none of these arrows marks a signi¢cant change in
basin geometry or unconformity, unlike the clear syn-rift to post-rift transition shown in Fig. 4.

Morley, 2004). This paper focuses on two such basins,
which both originated as rifts: the Pattani and Malay ba-
sins in the Gulf of Thailand (Fig. 1).
Conventional passive rifting backstripping and basin
modelling (after McKenzie, 1978) has been applied to the
Pattani and Malay basins (e.g. Hellinger & Sclater, 1983;
Pigott & Sattayarak, 1993; Bustin & Chonchawalit, 1995;
Madon & Watts, 1998; Wheeler & White, 2000).Although
results ¢tting the McKenzie model have been obtained,
they require large amounts of lithospheric thinning
by factors (b) of 2, and sometimes as high as 4 (e.g.
Bustin & Chonchawalit, 1995; Madon & Watts, 1998;
Wheeler & White, 2000). The upper- crustal extension
measured from oil industry seismic re£ection data

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 53

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
typically indicates b
1.5 and more typically b 5 1.2^1.3;
hence, an appeal has been made to non-uniform (depth-
dependent) thinning of the lithosphere (e.g. Hellinger &
Sclater, 1983; Madon & Watts, 1998; Watcharanantakul &
Morley, 2000).
Modelling of the lithospheric response to rift and post-
rift basin formation using the conventional method estab-
lished by McKenzie (1978) often encounters the problem
that estimates of the extension in the upper crust are less
than b-factors derived by backstripping the post-rift basin
(see the review by Allen & Allen, 2005, pp. 63^115). Solu-
tions to this problem typically require either depth-de-
pendent extension and thinning (e.g. Hellinger & Sclater,
1983; Baxter et al., 2001; Davis & Kusznir, 2002, 2004;
Kusznir et al., 2004), or require treating calculated values
54
for upper- crustal extension as underestimates that
require correction for the cumulative e¡ect of normal
faults that are below the resolution of seismic sections
(e.g. Marrett & Allmendinger, 1992; cf. Westaway, 1994b).
Several papers (e.g. White & McKenzie, 1989; Driscoll &
Karner, 1998; Baxter et al., 2001; Davis & Kusznir, 2002,
2004; Karner et al., 2003; Kusznir et al., 2004) have
suggested that depth-dependent stretching on passive
margins can be explained as a consequence of initial
rift deformation style, propagating oceanic spreading cen-
tres or mantle plume activity. However, the Pattani and
Malay basins formed initially by extension of continental
crust; they are located in a continental interior setting
and are ¢lled by terrestrial to marginal marine sediments.
Hence, the potential explanation of depth-dependent
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

stretching relating to a spreading centre is not applicable,
and there is no associated basaltic volcanism, nor any
identi¢ed regional domal uplift (cf. White & McKenzie,
1989) that would indicate a mantle plume. Seismic
tomography studies (e.g. Lebedev & Nolet, 2003) indicate
that at depths of up to 200 km, the mantle has above-
average temperatures beneath the Pattani and Malay ba-
sins. However, these anomalies do not persist deeper into
the mantle, making it likely that, rather than being caused
by a mantle plume, they are caused by the overlying
continental crust being hot because of high radioactive
heat production (cf. Westaway, 2006a). Figure 3 shows a
highly schematic summary of the sequence of events that
we regard as having occurred in this study region, for
comparison with the detailed evidence and modelling pre-
sented later.
Because of the di⁄culties, noted above, in using heaves
of normal faults, estimation of extension by backstripping
of sediment thicknesses, using the McKenzie model, has
been widely regarded as a more de¢nitive approach. How-
ever, because McKenzie backstripping does not incorpo -
rate post-rift lower- crustal £ow, it overestimates the
amount of extension that has occurred across any basin if,
in reality, there has been net outward £ow of lower crust
from beneath the basin (or underestimate it if there has
been net inward lower- crustal £ow) (e.g. Westaway, 1994a).
The main aspect of the Pattani and Malay basins that re-
quires explanation is the magnitude of their Miocene to
Recent post-rift, synformal subsidence, which ^ at 6^
12 km ^ exceeds any plausible prediction of the McKenzie
model (in its original form), given the limited extension
indicated by seismic-re£ection evidence of normal fault-
ing (see below, and also Madon & Watts, 1998). In
principle, this subsidence could be explained in other
ways, for instance by arguing for non-uniform (depth-
dependent) extension or for a massive contribution to local
extension from sub- seismic faulting.The main aim of this
study is to show instead that an alternative modelling tech-
nique, by Westaway (2002a), can explain this dramatic
post-rift subsidence as a consequence of outward £ow
of lower crust, driven by the sediment loading, which has
dynamically created accommodation space for further
sediment.
MECHANICS OF LOWER-CRUSTAL
FLOW INDUCED BY SEDIMENT LOADING
The numerical method, developed by Westaway (2002a)
and subsequently modi¢ed by Westaway et al. (2006b), al-
lows sedimentary basins and the adjacent eroding sedi-
ment- source regions that provide the sedimentary ¢ll to
be treated as coupled systems.This technique incorporates
a variant of the general ‘jelly sandwich’ model for the

Fig. 3. Schematic summary of our interpretation of the evolution, from syn-rift to post rift conditions, of the sedimentary basins in the
study region. Inferred senses of lower-crustal £ow are indicated at each stage.The numerical modelling presented later covers the
transition from stage (c) to stage (d). (a) Late syn-rift stage (? Early Oligocene). Extension (b 1.3) was accompanied by sedimentation at
a low rate (estimated as typically 1km in 10 million years, or 0.1mm a  1). During this stage, the extension can be estimated to
have thinned the brittle upper crust by 3.5 km, from say 15 to 15 km/ 1.3 or 11.5 km. In contrast, the e¡ect of such a low rate of
sedimentation (in a steady state, in the absence of extension) would be to displace the base of the brittle layer downward by only a few
hundred metres (cf.Westaway, 2002a). It can thus be expected that for these particular basins, the base of the brittle layer was shallower
beneath the basin than beneath its surroundings (i), causing lower- crust to £ow inward, as illustrated (ii). However, with less extension
and/or faster sedimentation, the £ow could have been in the opposite sense.The contemporaneous sediment is thought to have been
mainly of local provenance (iii).The highlands (iv), which later became the main source of sediment, are thought to have not been a
signi¢cant sediment source for this syn-rift stage. (b) Erosional stage at the syn-rift to post-rift transition (? Late Oligocene).When
extension ended, leaving a subaerial depocentre, local erosion of footwall topography began to supplement the other local sediment
sources (i). At the same time, the underlying lithosphere began to adjust back to its pre-rift thermal state. As the lithosphere cooled, the
base of the brittle layer thus adjusted to progressively deeper levels (ii).The sense of any contemporaneous lower- crustal £ow was
probably still inward, but due to the reduced lateral pressure gradient it can be expected to have been weaker than before (iii).The net
inward lower- crustal £ow caused a component of local crustal thickening, increasing the local Moho depth (iv) and thus partly cancelling
the syn-rift crustal thinning. (c) Early post-rift stage (? Early Miocene). Material from the highlands source area (i) starts to make a
signi¢cant contribution to the basin sediment supply.The thermal blanketing e¡ect caused by the increased sediment load applied to
the basin, and the deepening of the base of the brittle layer as the lithosphere continued to adjust back to its pre-rift thermal state,
combine to make the base of the brittle layer deeper beneath the basin than beneath the surrounding region (ii). Return lower- crustal
£ow from under the basin towards the sediment source area began (iii), as a result of both sediment loading in the basin and the erosion
from the sediment source area.The variation in Moho depth beneath the basin (iv) is determined by the balance between in£ux of
sediment and out£ow of lower crust. If these two rates balance, the Moho depth beneath the basin and also beneath the sediment source
(v) will remain constant. (d) Main post-rift stage (post- (?) Early Miocene). Following a change of climate, erosion in the sediment source
area greatly increased (i) and resulted in much faster sedimentation rates in the basin.The thermal state of the crust is thus perturbed
away from the (? near-) steady- state situation in (c).The faster sedimentation causes the base of the brittle upper crust to advect
downwards beneath the basin (ii), and the faster erosion causes it to advect upwards beneath the sediment source (iii).These changes
increase the lateral pressure gradient that acts to drive lower crust from beneath the basin to beneath the sediment source, causing the
rate of this £ow to increase signi¢cantly (iv).The net loss of crustal material beneath the basin results in progressive crustal thinning,
causing the Moho depth to decrease (v) and the sediment surface to subside (vi).The net gain of crustal material beneath the sediment
source results in progressive crustal thickening, causing the Moho depth to increase (vii) and the mean altitude of the land surface to
increase (viii).

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 55

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
continental lithosphere (e.g. Chen & Molnar, 1983), with
relatively strong layers representing the brittle upper crust
and mantle lithosphere con¢ning the middle layer that re-
presents the relatively mobile lower crust.The lower crust
beneath both the sediment source and the depocentre is
characterised by its e¡ective viscosity Ze , which is deter-
mined by the Moho temperature. It is assumed that the
boundary between the brittle upper continental crust
and the mobile lower crust occurs at the depth zb where a
temperature threshold (Tb ; 350 1C) is reached, given the
geothermal gradient in the crust.The lower crust beneath
this level is treated as a con¢ned £uid, which can £ow lat-
erally in response to horizontal gradients in the con¢ning
pressure, which is taken as the pressure at the base of the
overlying brittle layer. The depth zb beneath each part of
the model depends primarily on the crustal thickness Hc
and the Moho temperature Tm ; in the absence of radioac-
tive heating and surface processes, the geothermal gradi-
ent in the crust will be uniform, such that zb 5 Hc  Tb/
Tm. However, zb will also be a¡ected by surface processes;
‘thermal blanketing’ of the crust by sedimentation will in-
crease zb, whereas erosion will reduce it. It follows that, if
the crust has roughly the same thickness beneath a depo -
centre and an adjacent sediment source, then zb will be
greater beneath the former than the latter, creating a hori-
zontal pressure gradient that will act to drive lower crust
from beneath the depocentre to beneath the sediment
source. Flow in this sense will cause the crust to thicken
beneath the sediment source and to thin beneath the de-
pocentre. Over time, the thermal state of the crust will
thus adjust, in response to these crustal thickness changes,
so that any tendency for further crustal thickness changes
will be progressively countered. However, as will become
clear later, the typical overall e¡ect when such a model is
run is the net transfer of lower- crustal material, from be-
neath the depocentre to beneath the sediment source, bal-
ancing the transport of sediment in the opposite direction.
The parameter Ze, mentioned above, is de¢ned as the
viscosity that an isoviscous lower- crustal layer of a given
thickness would need to have in order to maintain the
same £ow rate, in response to a given pressure gradient,
as occurs in a real lower-crustal layer with temperature-
and thus depth-dependent viscosity (Westaway, 1998). If
(in the absence of perturbation by surface processes) the
geothermal gradient is assumed to be uniform in the lower
crust, then the downward decrease in viscosity will cause
the £ow velocity to peak roughly 9/10 of the way down be-
tween zb and the Moho depth zm (Westaway, 1998). The
viscosity^temperature calibration used by Westaway
(1998) relates Z e to the Moho viscosity Z m (the viscosity
of the lower crust immediately above the Moho) and to
Tm, enabling Ze to be estimated as 60  Zm.
In a steady- state situation, the in£ux of sediment into a
basin will balance the resulting out£ow of lower crust from
beneath the basin (e.g. Westaway, 1994a). The loading by
each layer of sediment thus displaces an equivalent
amount of lower crust to maintain a mass balance; in such
a situation, each layer of sediment thus dynamically creates
56
its own accommodation space. As linear rheologies are
being assumed, such a situation can develop for any basin
irrespective of its sedimentation rate. Such a situation re-
quires rates of erosion, sediment transport and sedimen-
tation to have remained constant over many millions of
years, such that the base of the brittle upper crust main-
tains a constant depth relative to the succession of instan-
taneous positions of the Earth’s surface in both the basin
and the sediment source. The lateral pressure gradient is
constant; thus, the £ux of lower- crust from beneath the
basin to beneath the sediment source is constant, so it
can balance the £ux of material transported by surface
processes in the opposite direction. However, under such
steady- state situations, no measurable change occurs that
permits a test for whether lower-crustal £ow ^ or some
other isostatic compensation mechanism ^ is occurring.
It is an investigation of the non- steady- state situation
following a change in sedimentation rate that permits an
observational test to be made (Westaway, 2002a). A step in-
crease in the sedimentation rate a¡ects the geotherm
within the crust; the temperature-de¢ned base of the brit-
tle upper crust advects upwards relative to the rock column
(but downwards relative to the succession of instantaneous
levels of the sediment surface). As a result, the local pres-
sure will increase, and the opposite e¡ect will cause a cor-
responding decrease in the pressure at the base of the
brittle layer beneath the eroding sediment source region.
The resulting increase in the lateral pressure gradient will
act to drive lower- crustal £ow at an increased rate from be-
neath the depocentre to beneath the sediment source. In-
itially, the outward mass £ux of lower crust from beneath a
model depocentre will exceed the model in£ux caused by
the increased sedimentation rate. Thus, basin develop-
ment results in the dynamic creation of an excess of ac-
commodation space over sediment in£ux, leading to net
crustal thinning. The coupled sediment source region ex-
periences analogous net crustal thickening, leading to
surface uplift. Evidence for lower- crustal £ow under non-
steady- state conditions is thus provided by paired in-
stances of excess subsidence over sediment supply for
depocentres and regional uplift rates that exceed spatially
averaged erosion rates for sediment sources (e.g.Westaway,
2004c).
The numerical technique used separately calculates, for
the depocentre and sediment source, the perturbation to
the geotherm caused by the assumed changes in rates of
erosion and sedimentation. It then uses these resulting
calculated lateral variations in pressure at the base of the
brittle layer to determine the horizontal mass £ux for the
lower- crustal £ow between these model regions. From
this, it calculates the change in crustal thickness beneath
the model depocentre and the source region during each
time step. These values are used to recalculate observable
quantities such as the crustal thickness and altitude of the
land surface (the sediment surface in the depocentre and
the mean altitude of the eroding land surface in the sedi-
ment source region) in both model regions.The latter cal-
culation assumes Airy isostasy with compensation in the
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
asthenosphere. If the land surface in the depocentre falls
below sea level, the option exists to incorporate water load-
ing, which adds to the lateral pressure gradient relative to
the subaerial sediment source and thus enhances the ex-
tent to which the system is thrown out of steady state by
the imposed changes in rates of surface processes. Full de-
tails of the method are provided by Westaway (2002a), sub-
sequent modi¢cations being documented by Westaway
et al. (2006b). An important limitation is that in its present
form, the method can only deal with a single step change in
rates of surface processes, not a succession of step changes
or a continuous variation. Testing against observational
evidence thus necessitates the identi¢cation of study re-
gions where, to a ¢rst approximation, some independent
process such as climate change has caused rates of surface
processes to vary in the required, simple, manner.
During basin evolution, the computer program thus dy-
namically recalculates the depth of the base of the brittle
layer. Such calculations can result in signi¢cant di¡erences
compared with simpler solutions that ¢x the base of the brit-
tle layer relative to the rock column, irrespective of surface
processes (e.g. Mitchell & Westaway, 1999; Westaway 2002a).
In general, such dynamic calculation predicts that the low-
er-crust will £ow from beneath a depocentre to beneath the
adjacent sediment source. Other computer programs, which
¢x the base of the brittle layer (discussed for instance by
Mitchell & Westaway,1999; Westaway, 2002a), predict the op-
posite sense of £ow. Critics (Allen etal., 2004) have suggested
that its prediction of this sense of lower-crustal £ow means
that there is a fundamental error in this computer program.
However, this sense of £ow can be seen to follow naturally
from ¢rst principles, given the underlying physics (see
above). As a result of this criticism, the solutions presented
in this paper will include details of calculated lateral varia-
tions in the depth of the base of the brittle layer, from which
it can be seen that the predicted sense of lower-crustal £ow
is consistent with the predicted sense of the lateral pressure
gradient that drives it, as indeed it should be.
Modelling of the isostatic response to surface processes
incorporating lower- crustal £ow has provided a physical
explanation for the ‘epeirogenic’ Quaternary surface uplift
in regions that are distant from plate boundaries, such as
Britain and adjoining parts of NW Europe (e.g.Westaway,
2001, 2002b, c, 2004a, 2005a, 2006b; Westaway et al., 2002,
2006a). Often when studying the Pleistocene, there is good
control over dating, and thus over rates of processes, that is
so much better than is typical for the earlier geological re-
cord. A related series of investigations has concerned the
investigation of Quaternary vertical crustal motions in re-
gions of active crustal extension, such as the Gulf of Cor-
inth in central Greece (Westaway, 2002a), and the interiors
of western Turkey (Westaway et al., 2004, 2006b) and SW
Bulgaria (Westaway, 2006b).There is indeed an abundance
of evidence for regional uplift across Turkey in general,
which appears to be explicable only as a consequence of
lower-crustal £ow induced by surface processes (e.g. Arger
et al., 2000; Demir et al., 2004; Westaway, 2004c). In each of
these studied regions, patterns of surface uplift that were
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
previously considered ‘anomalous’ can thus be explained
as natural consequences of lower-crustal £ow induced by
surface processes (erosion of onshore areas and associated
sedimentation in depocentres) at rates that increase over
time as a result of Quaternary climate change. Thus, this
new modelling has provided an alternative and uni¢ed
driving mechanism to supersede previous ad hoc explana-
tions (such as the isostatic consequences of subduction of
sediment, of heating of the crust because of volcanism or
of hypothetical localised phases of crustal shortening in-
terspersed with the regional extension; cf. Westaway,
2002a). The success of such studies indicates that the ap-
plication of equivalent techniques to longer-timescale in-
stances of ‘anomalous’ post-rift subsidence in
sedimentary basins, in response to changes in sedimenta-
tion rates, should be attempted.
In order to model lower- crustal £ow in response to se-
diment loading in the context of the Pattani and Malay ba-
sins, it is necessary to review their geological history and
tectonic setting, the erosion history of the adjacent re-
gions, and the nature of the underlying lithosphere.These
elements are discussed below, and then the modelling of
the basins is presented.
GEOLOGY OF THE PATTANI AND MALAY
BASINS
Figure 2b illustrates the central Pattani basin, revealing a
synformal geometry to the base of seismic penetration.
This seismic section does not show a classic rift geometry,
although normal faults display o¡sets that increase with
depth. However, none of these can be described as classic
half-graben boundary faults. Attempts to determine the
location of a syn-rift to post-rift transition within this Oli-
gocene^Miocene sequence have proven problematic (e.g.
Jardine, 1997; Watcharanantakul & Morley, 2000; Wheeler
& White, 2000). Conversely, where the post-rift sequence
is thinner, as in the northern Pattani basin and North Malay
basin (i.e. the northern part of the Malay basin; Fig. 1), the
syn-rift sequence is locally well developed and classic syn-
rift and post-rift interpretations can be made (Figs 4 and 5).
Generally, the Gulf of Thailand is divided into ¢ve major
sequences following the stratigraphic scheme of Unocal
(Jardine,1997; Fig. 5).These sequences are thought to re£ect
Neogene low-order relative sea-level changes. Two periods
of non-deposition occurred: one in the Late Oligocene (the
Mid Tertiary Unconformity, or MTU), and the other around
10 Ma (the Mid Miocene Unconformity, or MMU).
The relationship of the oldest sediment, known as Se-
quence1, with the timing of crustal extension is problema-
tical, as a result of the diachronous onset of rifting in the
Gulf of Thailand. Sequence 1 was originally de¢ned (by
Jardine, 1997) as comprising Oligocene to Early Miocene
syn-rift sediment. However, in the northern Pattani basin,
the main syn-rift section is now thought instead to prob-
ably span the Eocene to Early Oligocene (Rigo de Rhigi
et al., 2003). The Late Oligocene to Early Miocene
57
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
Location of subsidence curve
SW Figure 6b
0
500
1000
~ 3km
1500
TWTT (ms.)
2000
2500
3000
~ 4km
3500
4000
4500
Fig. 4. Seismic line (from PTTEP) across the North Malay basin illustrating a well-de¢ned syn-rift half graben (of Eocene? to
Oligocene age) unconformably overlain by post-rift Late Oligocene to earliest Miocene lacustrine shales.The Miocene post-rift
sequence onlaps the basement high to the east.
succession overlies eroded tilted fault blocks and seals a
highly irregular rift topography with a much more spa-
tially extensive sequence that shows much reduced expan-
sion into normal faults (with maximum throws of tens to
hundreds of metres) compared with the Eocene^Early Oli-
gocene section (Rigo de Rhigi et al., 2003; Fig. 5). To the
south of the Pattani basin, the North Malay basin displays
similar characteristics (Fig. 4). It thus seems likely that the
oldest sediment in the deeper parts of the central Pattani
basin has a similar age (i.e. it is Eocene to Early Oligocene),
but the Late Oligocene to Recent sequence is locally too
thick for wells to have penetrated the underlying syn-rift
sequence.
The Late Oligocene to Earliest Miocene sequence is
characterised by high-amplitude re£ections from a lacus-
trine shale sequence that occurs extensively within the Pat-
tani and North Malay basins (Figs 2b, 4 and 5).This shale-
dominated sequence overlies the main syn-rift topography
and has a regional synformal geometry. It marks a period
of relatively slow sedimentation with low clastic input
(apart from regions adjacent to eroding basement highs),
before the onset of extensive £ood plain deposition in the
Early Miocene (Fig. 6). It may have post-dated the rifting,
or, alternatively may have been accompanied by low strain
rate extension. The Late Oligocene is the period when ex-
tensive rift basins opened west of the Pattani basin, both
within the Gulf of Thailand (the Kra, Western and Hua
Hin basins) and further north in onshore Thailand (e.g.
the Suphan Buri, Ayutthaya and Phitsanulok basins; Pra-
58
NE
Late
Miocene
Middle
Miocene
Early
Miocene
Pre-Tertiary
accoustic basement
Late Oligocene
Eocene (?)- Oligocene Syn rift
didtan & Dook, 1992; Morley et al., 2001; Fig. 7). Hence,
the lacustrine event may in part mark the onset of a broad
post-rift depression and in part mark diversion of sedi-
ments into the newly forming rift basins.
The overlying Early Miocene to Pliocene £oodplain,
swamp, delta, and marginal marine deposits in the Pattani
basin mark the establishment of a throughgoing £uvial
system, which linked the sediment source (in the highlands
to the north) to the Pattani basin (Jardine, 1997; Leo, 1997;
Lockhart et al., 1997; Fig. 7). Previously, this £uvial system
had supplied the newly opened, younger rift basins farther
north. The dominance of coarse clastic ¢ll through much
of the Late Oligocene to Miocene history of the Ayutthaya
and Hua Hin basins (O’Leary & Hill, 1989; Pradidtan &
Dook, 1992; Figs 7 and 8) indicates the likely path of this
drainage into the Pattani basin.
Accurate dating of terrestrial sequences in the rift ba-
sins of Thailand, particularly de¢ning the Oligocene^
Miocene boundary using palynomorphs, is di⁄cult (e.g.
Watanasak, 1990; Ratanasthien, 2002). Palynology from
o¡shore wells indicates that the clastic sequence overlying
the lacustrine shales is Early Miocene, but whether this se-
quence dates back to the very base of the Miocene, or is
even in part latest Oligocenee, is uncertain. The base of
the Miocene is presently dated at 23.03 Ma (Steininger et
al., 1997). Many of the apatite ¢ssion-track central ages
for the western highlands fall in the 22^18 Ma range (Up-
ton, 1999), but denudation as old as 25^23 Ma is indicated
in places (Lacassin et al., 1997; Upton, 1999), whereas
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 (a) North Pattani schematic cross-section on western basin margin Towards main basin depocentre
Post-rift minor conjugate fault
W swarm trends E
0 Marine

3
Early Miocene-Recent
4 Ko Kra Ridge Late rift/

Depth (km)
early post-rift
5
Late Oligocene-Early Miocene
6
Eocene-Oligocene

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

Alluvial fan deposits
Lacustrine shales, some with Fluivio-deltaic deposits with Early Miocene-Recent, Fluvial sandstones
source potential, and interbedded thin interbedded lacustrine post-rift, predominantly Coals
sands and thin limestones deposits flood plain to marginal Floodplain fine
marine mudstones and grained sediments
sandston Fluivio-deltaic deposits
Lacustrine deposits

(b) Western Gulf of Thailand schematic cross-section

Pre-Tertiary ridge
draped by post-rift
W Western Basin -type half graben Chao Phraya Group Kra Basin -type half graben E
0
Late Miocene-Recent
1
2
3

Depth (km)
4 Late Oliogocene-
Middle Miocene
5
2 km
6
Chao Praya Group (Late Miocene- Syn-rift Late Oligocene-Middle Syn-rift lacustrine Ratburi Limestone
Recent, post-rift, predominantly Miocene lacustrine shales with limestone (karstified in places)
flood plain to marginal marine thin sandstones and limestones-
mudstones and sandstones contains main source rocks
Syn-rift Late Oligocene- Middle Miocene Syn-rift Late Oligocene-Middle Mesozoic red beds Cretaceous/Triassic granite
fluvio-deltaic sandstones Miocene coarse alluvial fan (Khorat Group)
and mudstones, lacustrine shale deposits

Fig. 5. Representative schematic cross- sections based on published well and seismic re£ection data illustrating the structural style and stratigraphy of the Gulf of Thailand, in (a) the northern part of
the Pattani Basin and (b) the western Gulf of Thailand. Based on data from Wollands & Haw (1976), Achalabhuti & Udom-Agsorn, (1978), Pradidtan & Dook (1992), Jardine (1997), Heward et al. (2000)
and Rigo de Rhigi et al. (2003).

59
Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

(a) Time (my.) kilometres of throw. They are small faults, generally with
40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 tens of metres of throw, which developed over a 20^25 mil-
0 lion-year time span (Fig 2b and c). Hence, these normal
Late Oligocene-Early Miocene
Syn-rift
1
low subsidence rate faults cannot reasonably be regarded as evidence of a major
(deposition ~0.1 mm/a)
Maximum extensional episode (cf. Kornsawan & Morley, 2002; Rigo
2 thickness of Early-Middle Miocene de Rhigi et al., 2003), and so the stratigraphic level where
~ 22 Ma
syn-rift high subsidence rate
3 section (deposition ~0.5 mm/a) they die out is no indicator of the start of post-rift subsi-
?
Depth (km)

uncertain dence. Based on the prevailing oil industry terminology

4 at the time (by Jardine, 1997), Watcharanantakul & Morley
Episode of erosion
and removal of
5
syn-rift topography
prior to onset of
6 post-rift subsidence
7
8
(b) 40 35 30 25 20
0
Syn-rift
1 interpreted as ‘syn-rift’ and underestimated that inter-
2 ~ 22 Ma
3 In summary, three factors have contributed to the confu-
4
Fig. 6. Subsidence curves for the depocentres of the Pattani and
North Malay basins based on wells and seismic re£ection data
(Watcharanantakul & Morley 2000). See Figs 2b and 4 for
locations of curves (a) and (b), respectively. Over much of the
North Malay Basin, the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene
sequence exhibits a synformal geometry, typical of post-rift
deposits. However, in some localities expansion into minor
normal faults causes greater thicknesses of the sequence and
small (5^10-km wide) half-graben geometries.
younger (Middle Miocene) denudation is important in
NW Thailand. Based on the oldest part of the clastic
sequence most likely being earliest Miocene, and the apa-
tite ¢ssion-track ages that indicate the initiation of in-
creased erosion of the western highlands, 22 Ma seems a
reasonable timing for the regional increase in the rates of
surface processes in the modelling (see below). Nonethe-
less, there is clearly scope for re¢ning this age estimate,
and the model is necessarily a simpli¢cation of the natural
processes.
The timing of events a¡ecting the Pattani basin has
been discussed in detail above because the onset and ter-
mination of rifting and onset of post-rift sedimentation
have been interpreted in di¡erent ways. For example, the
onset of post-rift subsidence in the Pattani basin was dated
as Late Miocene by Wheeler & White (2000), who also as-
serted that the subsequent subsidence in this basin has not
been anomalous. However, they placed the base of the
post-rift section very shallow (maximum depth 2 km; i.e.
in the Late Miocene; Fig. 2b, arrow 1). This stratigraphic
position was established by placing the base of the post-
rift section near the tops of extensive sets of conjugate nor-
mal faults that a¡ect this basin. However, these normal
faults are not classic syn-rift boundary faults or large tilted
fault block bounding faults with hundreds of metres or
(2000) also incorrectly placed the onset of post-rift subsi-
dence within the Early Miocene (Fig. 2b, arrow 2). This
estimate has been superseded now that the Eocene^Oli-
gocene and Late Oligocene^Early Miocene sequences are
resolved in more recent stratigraphic schemes, as dis-
Central Pattani Basin cussed above. By placing the base of the post-rift section
later in the stratigraphic succession than now seems rea-
15 10 5 0
sonable from the regional context, the analysis by Wheeler
& White (2000) overestimated the thickness of sediment
preted as ‘post-rift’; hence, the latter did not appear anom-
alously thick in their interpretation.
North Malay Basin sion over de¢ning the onsets of rifting and of post-rift sub-
sidence: (1) minor extension continuing into the post-rift
phase; (2) the great thickness of the post-rift sequence in
the central Pattani basin, making it inaccessible to direct
study and (3) the view that rifting across the Gulf of Thai-
land has been synchronous, when it is now clear that it has
been diachronous.Typically, this rifting was Eocene^Oligo-
cene in the east, but Late Oligocene^Middle Miocene in the
west. However, a few basins (e.g. Chumphon and Songkla ba-
sins; Heward et al., 2000; Lawwongngnam & Philp, 1993)
show evidence of extensional activity during all these stages.
The Malay basin covers an area of 83 000 km2; it is
500-km long and up to 200 -km wide. The maximum
thickness of its Cenozoic sedimentary sequence is uncer-
tain, but has been estimated at 12 km, with the Eocene^
Oligocene syn-rift succession being more than 4 -km thick
and the Early Miocene to Recent post-rift succession
being more than 8-km thick in some places (Tjia, 1994;
Ngah et al., 1996; Madon et al., 1999). This thickness esti-
mate may in fact underestimate the total amount of sedi-
ment deposited, because the thick basin centre was
episodically inverted and eroded during the Middle and
Late Miocene (Ng, 1987; Hutchison, 1996a, b; Ngah et al.,
1996; Madon, 1997; Madon et al., 1997, 1999); Cooper et al.
(1989) estimated that up to 1200 m of the Miocene succes-
sion has been eroded in some places. However, Ngah
(1997) stated that the absence of an identi¢able top base-
ment re£ection (in the deepest parts of this basin) has led
to speculation that its maximum depth exceeds 15 km.
Ngah (1997) also showed a low-resolution regional seismic
line that displays a remarkably thick, synformal geometry
to this basin ¢ll.
The change in sedimentation rates seen in the Pattani
basin in the Early Miocene (Fig. 6) warrants discussion.
One potentially important factor that may have caused this
change is the e¡ect of climate change on erosion rates.The

60 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

(a) Eocene- (b) Late Oligocene Key

Oligocene
Marine conditions

Fluival-alluvial fans,
considerable
coarse clastic component
Fluvio-delatic deposits
(higher energy)

Lacustrine depositional
environment

Largely low-energy
floodplain/coal
swamp/littoral
Region of uplift/non-
deposition

Rift boundary fault

(c) Early Miocene (d) Middle Miocene Synclines in

Mesozoic rocks

Geometry and
Size of lacustrine
NP systems uncertain

C PCPRS
CP

Basins
H = Hua Hin
K = Kra
NM
S W = Western
C = Chumphon
NP = North Pattani
CP = Central Pattani
SP = South Pattani
S = Songkhla
NM = North Malay
(e) Late Miocene (f) Pliocene

PCPRS = Palaeo
Chao Phraya River
system

50 km

Fig. 7. Palaeogeographic evolution of the Gulf of Thailand and North Malay basins, illustrating the change in basin type (rift or post-rift
basin) and sediment ¢ll with time. Sediment source areas are also indicated. Based on the same sources as Fig. 5, plus, Lawwongngnam
& Philp (1993), Lockhart et al. (1997), Leo (1997) and Watcharanantakul & Morley (2000).

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 61

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

Fig. 8. Apatite ¢ssion-track central ages (Upton et al., 1997; Upton, 1999) and other isotopic ages (Lacassin et al., 1997; Barr et al., 2002;
Rhodes et al., 2002) showing evidence for a N^S-trending belt of Late Oligocene to Early Miocene denudation that extended from
northern Thailand to theThai peninsula south of theThree Pagodas fault. Slower earlier Cenozoic denudation of the Khorat plateau is
indicated from apatite ¢ssion track data (Upton, 1999). In general, during cooling, closure temperatures for argon retention (McDougall
& Harrison, 1999) and limiting temperatures for ¢ssion-track annealing (Carter, 1999) are complex functions of cooling rates and grain
sizes.The following temperature ranges indicate an approximate guide to the stability of these systems: argon retention in muscovite,
350^250 1C, and for biotite, 300^200 1C; ¢ssion track annealing in zircon, 320^200 1C, and in apatite, 110^60 1C. Modi¢ed from
Morley (2004).

syn-rift basins of northern Thailand show a switch from
palynomorphs associated with a temperate climate to tro -
pical forms in the Early Miocene (Songtham, 2000; Rata-
nasthien, 2002); this change is also seen in peninsular
Malaysia (Morley, 1998). Clift et al. (2004) (see also Clift,
2004) have inferred from increased rates of o¡shore sedi-
mentation (notably in the Bengal Fan, o¡shore of the sub-
aerial Bengal basin in Fig.1, where thicknesses of Cenozoic
sediment exceed 20 km) that the Southeast Asian monsoon
began to strengthen between 22 and 15 Ma, linked to the
progressive rise of theTibetan Plateau. Uddin & Lundberg
(1998) have shown that rates of sedimentation in the Ben-
gal basin also typically increased around the Oligocene^
Miocene boundary. Before this change, these sands were
quartz-dominated, indicating removal of less stable
minerals by prolonged weathering, whereas after it they
contain signi¢cant clast concentrations of feldspar and of
other diverse sedimentary, metamorphic and volcanic
rocks, suggesting signi¢cantly faster erosion within the
eastern Himalaya and Indo -Burman ranges, followed by

62 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

CM = Chiang Mai basin

Salween River
P = Phitsanulok basin
MS = Mae Sot basin
L = Lampang basin

Laos

CM
L Mekong River

Border of
Thailand
Drainage
divides

Rift basin
MS
P
Rift basin
with known
Myanmar
long lived
lacustrine
deposits
Chao Phraya
Chainat
River
Ridge

Edge of Khorat
Plateau
Suphan
Buri Basin
Andaman Sea
Ayutthaya Basin

Bangkok
N
Maeklaeng
Cambodia

River
Thailand

50 km Gulf of Thailand

Fig. 9. Map of the principal drainage systems into the northern Gulf of Thailand, illustrating the relationship between rift basin location
and the Chao Phraya River system.Well-established lacustrine systems, which existed during the Miocene, probably meant that at this time
the Chao Phraya did not form a throughgoing drainage system all the way from the north.The River Khwae (Kwai) £ows SE from the
extreme west of Thailand, joining the south- £owing Maeklaeng 100 km NWof Bangkok. Modi¢ed from Hall & Morley (2004).

re-deposition. By analogy, the increased rates of sedimen-
tation observed inThailand, starting at 22 Ma (Fig. 6), may
likewise re£ect increased rates of erosion caused by mon-
soon strengthening.
SEDIMENT SOURCE AREAS
At present, the principal sediment in£ux into the Gulf of
Thailand is provided by the Chao Phraya River (Fig.9). Ac-
cording to Milliman & Syvitski (1992), this drains an area
of 160 000 km2 and transports 11 million tonnes of sedi-
ment to the coastline annually. Assuming a sediment den-
sity of 2000 kg m  3, these data indicate a spatial average
erosion rate across this catchment of 0.034 mm a  1.
However, at present, much of this sediment load is depos-
ited in a £ood plain around and inland of Bangkok (the
Central Plains basin; Fig. 8), and thus does not reach the
coastline.The spatial average erosion rate within the upper
reaches of this river system is thus probably many times
the ¢gure calculated above. During glacio - eustatic falls
in sea level, the coastline retreated many hundreds of

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 63

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
kilometres to the south, subaerially exposing the present
£oor of the Gulf of Thailand (which, at present, has a
mean water depth of 45 m and a maximum water depth
of 80 m) and causing the length of the Chao Phraya river
to increase downstream by a corresponding distance. It is
presumed that during such stages, much of the earlier
highstand deltaic deposits inland of the modern coastline
are reworked downstream and re-deposited, along with
material transported directly from the upper reaches of
the river system, thus sustaining the high time-averaged
deposition rates in what are now o¡shore basins (as in
Fig. 6a).
The second most important river system, which enters
the present Gulf of Thailand 70 km west of the Chao
Phraya, is the Maeklaeng/Khwae (Kwai), which drains
an 20 000 km2 area of western Thailand (Fig. 9). During
Pleistocene marine lowstands, this has formed a left-bank
tributary of the extended Chao Phraya system. As indi-
cated in Fig. 7, for much of the Late Cenozoic, the basins
now o¡shore in the Gulf of Thailand were supplied with
sediment from the north by an ancestral, river system,
known as the ‘palaeo -Chao Phraya’ (e.g. Leo, 1997). As de-
picted in this ¢gure, this palaeo -Chao Phraya river system
seems to have coincided roughly with the modern Maek-
laeng/Kwai and its former downstream continuation, now
submerged. In contrast, as indicated in Fig. 9, much of the
modern onshore Chao Phraya catchment instead con-
sisted, for much of the Late Cenozoic, of a series of lake ba-
sins. The main area of the Miocene ‘palaeo -Chao Phraya’
catchment would have thus been located south of the pre-
sent catchment in north Thailand. Its main sediment
source areas in the Miocene would have therefore been
the Mae Ping fault zone area in the western highlands, the
Chainat Ridge and the now almost peneplaned area of pre-
Tertiary rocks (unconformably overlain by 300^500 m of
Pliocene to Recent sediments of the Central Plains basin)
between the Suphan Buri and Ayutthaya basins (Figs 8
and 9).
Sediment source areas for the Pattani basin have been
identi¢ed from: (1) provenance studies of the basin ¢ll,
from surface and well data (Trevena & Clark, 1986; O’Leary
& Hill, 1989; Pradidtan & Dook, 1992; Leo, 1997; Lockhart
etal.,1997; Uttamo etal.,1999; Rigo de Rhigi etal., 2003); (2)
the timing of denudation of pre-Tertiary highland areas
using Ar^Ar and ¢ssion-track thermochronology (Upton
et al., 1997; Upton, 1999; Fig. 8) and (3) the onlap of pre-Ter-
tiary basement areas by Late Cenozoic sediments as seen
on seismic re£ection pro¢les (e.g. Jardine, 1997; Leo, 1997;
Lockhart et al., 1997; Watcharanantakul & Morley, 2000;
Rigo de Rhigi et al., 2003). These data indicate, ¢rst, that
onlap of topographic highs that acted as local sediment
sources adjacent to the Pattani and Malay basins began in
the Late Oligocene and that these highs were mostly cov-
ered by the end of the Early Miocene. Second, provenance
studies indicate that these basins were supplied by sedi-
ment eroded from the western highlands (in the Thai-
land^Myanmar border region) and the western margin of
the Khorat Plateau, as well as from local highs adjacent to
64
the basins (O’Leary & Hill, 1989). For example, the Oligo -
cene^Middle Miocene ¢ll of the Ayutthaya basin (Fig. 8) is
predominantly £uvial and alluvial fan-derived, with large
volumes of arkose locally derived from granites immedi-
ately north and northwest of the basin, and volcanic and
clastic lithic grains derived from the Khorat Plateau to
the east (O’Leary & Hill, 1989). Within the Pattani basin,
local sediment sources can be identi¢ed for some areas
(e.g. the southern Pattani basin, Lockhart et al., 1997; and
the western £ank of the Pattani basin, Rigo de Rhigi et al.,
2003) and time periods (Late Oligocene^Early Miocene,
Rigo de Rhigi et al., 2003; Fig. 7). However, much of the se-
diment input to this basin was derived from the north
through the palaeo -Chao Phraya river system (Leo, 1997;
Rigo de Rhigi et al., 2003; Fig. 7).
Regarding thermochronology, modelling of ¢ssion
tracks in apatite from the eastern Khorat Plateau by Upton
(1999) showed that the Mesozoic stratigraphic succession
(including the Khorat Group, comprising continental
clastic deposits) reached maximum burial between 74 and
39 Ma, with the samples exiting the partial-annealing
zone (temperature 60 1C) between 49 and 11 Ma (Fig. 8).
The subsequent cooling rate, as a result of denudation, was
calculated at 1.5  0.5 1C Ma  1 by Upton (1999), indicat-
ing an erosion rate of 0.05 mm a  1, assuming a steady
geothermal gradient of 30 1C km  1. In much of north-
ern Thailand and the extreme west of Thailand, denuda-
tion has been occurring slowly since the Late Cretaceous
(Upton et al., 1997). Between the Mae Ping fault zone and
Chiang Mai (Fig. 8), apatite and zircon from gneiss and
granite show rapid cooling through the partial-annealing
zone (110^60 1C) during the Late Oligocene^Middle
Miocene, with typical cooling rates between 8.5 and
25 1C Ma  1 (Upton, 1999; Rhodes, 2002) indicating denu-
dation rates of 0.3 to 0.8 mm a  1. South of the Mae
Ping fault, the data are more limited, but apatite central
ages typically lie between 23 and 18 Ma (Upton, 1999).
These ages mark cooling through 110 1C (e.g. Carter,
1999), indicating a subsequent time-averaged cooling rate
of 4.8 to 6.1 1C Ma  1 and an associated denudation
rate of 0.2 mm a  1.
These data support the reconstruction of the palaeo -
geography in Fig. 7, indicating that most of the sediment
in the Pattani basin has been derived from the north, ori-
ginating from the high areas between the onshore rift ba-
sins and from the western ranges of Thailand. More
easterly sources, in and around the Khorat Plateau, have
been less important as a sediment source. The mineral
composition of the sediments, isopach trends and orien-
tation of channels from seismic re£ection data indicate
that the in£ux of material derived from the north via the
palaeo -Chao Phraya river system reached as far south as
the North Malay basin (Leo, 1997). According to Leo
(1997), this sediment formed a large delta complex in the
vicinity of the North Malay basin (Fig. 7).The very shallow
marine conditions evident in this palaeo -delta are docu-
mented by extensive tidal deposits that alternate with coals
and coaly shales (Jardine, 1997; Leo, 1997). Even as far
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
south as the Malay basin, episodic exposure to erosion oc-
curred during Pliocene and Pleistocene sea-level low-
stands, when £uvial channels were incised into the upper
part of this stacked sequence (Tjia, 1994).
Less published information is available for the Malay
basin. However, it is elongated NW^SE and oriented par-
allel to the coasts of peninsular Malaysia (to the SW) and
Vietnam (to the NE), suggesting that its principal sedi-
ment sources were from the SW and/or the NE. As men-
tioned above, the North Malay basin also seems to have
been partially sourced from the north via the palaeo -Chao
Phraya river system (Leo, 1997; Fig. 7).
SUBSIDENCE AND THERMAL HISTORY
OF THE PATTANI AND MALAY BASINS
The Pattani basin has up to 7.5 km thickness of Late Oli-
gocene and younger sediment (Fig. 2b, c), its Early Mio -
cene to Recent post-rift sequence reaching a maximum
thickness of 6^7 km. The upper-crustal extension, from
summing heaves on syn-rift normal faults visible on seis-
mic sections across this basin, typically indicates b 1.3
(Watcharanantakul & Morley, 2000). Flexural backstrip-
ping and Airy backstripping of the Pattani basin post-rift
sequence indicate b 5 2^2.5 (Hellinger & Sclater, 1983; Pi-
gott & Sattayarak, 1993; Bustin & Chonchawalit, 1995;
Watcharanantakul & Morley, 2000) when this basin is ana-
lysed, conventionally, as a consequence of thermal subsi-
dence following earlier crustal extension. Similarly, for
the Malay basin, the upper- crustal extension is estimated
to be low, with b 5 1.5 (e.g. Madon et al., 1999), whereas
backstripping of the post-rift sequence suggests litho -
sphere thinning by up to b 5 4 (Madon & Watts, 1998).
Hence, there is a signi¢cant discrepancy for both the Pat-
tani and Malay basins between estimates of extension from
heaves on normal faults and from subsidence analysis.
Figure 10 compares the post-rift basin histories of dif-
ferent rifts with similar upper- crustal extension factors
(bo1.5). This comparison illustrates that di¡erent
amounts of post-rift sedimentation can occur following
similar amounts of extension. In the 140 million years
since the Late Jurassic rifting, sedimentation in the North
Sea has attained a maximum thickness of 3^4 km (e.g.
Roberts et al., 1993; White & Latin, 1993; Allen & Allen,
2005). Conversely, the Anza Graben in Kenya had a similar
(i.e. Oligocene) timing of cessation of rifting to the Pattani
and Malay basins, and has a considerably thicker syn-rift
sequence than these basins; yet, the maximum post-rift
subsidence (Miocene^Recent) is only 500 m (Morley
et al., 1999). The Anza Graben is in a semi-arid setting
where Late Cenozoic sediment supply has been limited.
These comparisons illustrate how much post-rift sedi-
mentation has occurred in the Pattani and Malay basins
compared with other basins.
The McKenzie (1978) stretching model holds that (ex-
cluding the e¡ects of parameter values such as di¡erent
densities and crust and lithosphere thicknesses) the
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
Time (Ma)
225 200 150 100 50 0
0
1 North Sea
2
3
4
5
Depth (km)
6 Anza Graben
7 Pattani basin
8
Malay basin
9 Syn-rift to
post-rift
10 transition
11
12
13
Fig. 10. Comparison of maximum subsidence rates from
depocentres in the Viking Graben of the North Sea (Allen &
Allen, 2005), the Malay basin (Madon et al., 1999), the Pattani
basin (Fig. 2b), and the Anza Graben of Kenya (Morley et al.,
1999).
amount and rate of post-rift thermal subsidence in a basin
depend primarily on the value of b for the syn-rift phase.
The role of sediment loading is considered, but its e¡ect is
limited by the nature of the Airy isostasy equation used.
The comparison in Fig. 10 suggests strongly that amounts
and rates of sediment accumulating in the post-rift phase
are independent of b, indicating that an additional pro -
cess, not considered in the McKenzie (1978) analysis, may
have a signi¢cant role in the evolution of sedimentary ba-
sins. We later suggest that this process is outward lower-
crustal £ow from beneath a basin, driven by the basin’s
own sediment loading.
The sediment in these Gulf of Thailand basins is al-
most entirely terrestrial (Fig. 5). In the Pattani basin, mar-
ine conditions only developed from the Late Pliocene
onwards (e.g.Wollands & Haw, 1976; Jardine, 1997; Rigo de
Rhigi et al., 2003). For most of the Late Cenozoic, sedi-
mentation thus kept pace with subsidence to a good ap-
proximation, such that deposition persisted just above
sea level. The Malay basin, located closer to the open sea
(Fig. 1), contains non-marine rocks from the Oligocene to
the Early Miocene, with marine in£uence beginning in the
latest Early Miocene, the subsequent sequence being
dominated by £oodplain to marginal marine and tidal de-
posits (Ngah et al., 1996; McCa¡rey et al.,1998; Madon et al.,
65
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
1999).The di¡erence in timing of the onset of marine con-
ditions between these two basins re£ects an overall north-
westward increase in marine in£uence during the Miocene
and Pliocene (e.g. Wollands & Haw, 1976; Leo, 1997; Lock-
hart et al., 1997; Hall & Morley, 2004), as the Gulf of Thai-
land has progressively grown to its present dimensions by
inundating what had previously been subaerial land (Fig.
7). Hence, the e¡ect of sediment loading by in¢lling pre-
existing accommodation space between an initial, deep,
sea £oor and sea level is not applicable to the Pattani basin,
and only shallow marine conditions are appropriate for the
Malay basin.
Thermal state of the crust
Geothermal gradients associated with basins in the conti-
nental crust of Sundaland are typically high (36^
75 1C km  1; Table 1).This crust includes pervasive granite
intrusions (mostly,Triassic and Late Cretaceous to Palaeo -
gene; cf. Hutchison, 1996b); consequently, part of the ob-
served high surface heat £ow can be attributed to
radiogenic heat production, which can be assumed to oc-
cur in the upper 10^15 km of the crust (e.g. Lachen-
bruch 1968, 1970; Roy et al., 1972). Worldwide heat £ow
from the mantle is typically 20^30 mWm  2 and may
exceptionally approach 40 mWm  2 (e.g. Artemieva &
Mooney, 1999; Wang et al., 2000). Seismic tomography
shows that the uppermost mantle at 60 km depth be-
neath the Gulf of Thailand has low (up to 5% below
average) seismic velocities (e.g. Lebedev & Nolet, 2003), in-
dicating relatively high temperatures. The high surface
heat £ow seen regionally across Sundaland, and the gener-
ally low upper-mantle velocities observed using seismic
tomography, suggest that mantle heat £ow is also high in
this region (Hall, 2002; Lebedev & Nolet, 2003; Hall &
Morley, 2004).
Exploration wells, which reach depths of 4 km in the
Pattani and Malay basins, show typical geothermal gradi-
ents of 30 1C km  1 and heat £ows of 78 mWm  2
on basin margins, increasing to 60 1C km  1 and
100 mWm  2 in basin centres (Bustin & Chonchawalit,
1995; Madon et al., 1999; see also Hall, 2002). These high
temperatures result at least in part from a signi¢cant insu-
lating e¡ect by shale within the sedimentary sequences
and/or a high concentration of radiogenic minerals within
the sediment (Waples, 2001, 2002). Although sedimentary
rocks typically have thermal conductivities of 2.3^
2.6 Wm  1 1C  1, coals and organic-rich shales can have
much lower values, o2.0 Wm  1 1C  1 , and in extreme
cases between 0.2 and 1.0 Wm  1 1C  1 (Nunn & Lin,
2002). However, the basin sediments also have high radio -
genic heat production, which Waples (2002) estimated as
1.8 mWm  3; this will also a¡ect the thermal state of the
crust. Nonetheless, other parts of Sundaland with much
thinner sedimentary sequences also display high tempera-
tures; for example, the onshore rift basins of Thailand,
where extension ended around the beginning of the Plio -
cene, have geothermal gradients of 30^70 1C km  1 (see
66
review in Morley et al., 2001). Geothermal gradients be-
neath the Pattani and Malay basins could well thus have
been similar to their present-day values in the Early
Miocene, before the bulk of the present thickness of sedi-
ment accumulated.
The granites that form much of the upper crust in the
basin £anks can be expected to have greater concentrations
of radioactive heat-producing elements than the sedi-
ments in the basin that laterally lie at equivalent depths.
Yet, the geothermal gradient on the rift £anks is half that
of the basinal areas, from which it follows that key factor
controlling high geothermal gradients in the basins is the
low thermal conductivity of the sediments in the basin in-
teriors (i.e. these shale-dominated sequences in the basins
have lower thermal conductivity than the more sand-
dominated sediments and basement rocks on the basin
£anks).
As in other modelling studies (e.g. Westaway, 2002a;
Westaway et al., 2004), it is important to estimate the Moho
temperature in the present study region, because this de-
termines the e¡ective viscosity Ze for the lower crust and
thus governs how readily this layer can £ow in response to
loads of a given magnitude (cf. Westaway, 1998). The sim-
plest possible calculation assumes that the temperature
distribution in the crust is that appropriate for a steady-
state situation with radiogenic heating at shallow depths;
perturbations to the geotherm caused by the sedimenta-
tion and associated erosion for the time being are ne-
glected. In many regions, the surface heat £ow varies
linearly with the radioactive heat production Y(z 5
0) 5 Yo in surface rocks (e.g. Lachenbruch, 1970). The
most satisfactory explanation of this relation requiresY(z)
to decrease exponentially with depth, as
YðzÞ ¼ Yo exp ðz=DÞ: ð1Þ
D quanti¢es the depth scale of this decrease and is typi-
cally 10^15 km (e.g. Lachenbruch, 1968, 1970). A possible
explanation for the exponential decay inY(z), suggested by
Lachenbruch (1970) and others, is that hydrothermal cir-
culation concentrates radioactive elements towards the
upper part of the crust.
If radioactive heat production varies as in Eqn (1), then
the temperature satis¢es
qo z D2 Yo
TðzÞ ¼ þ ð1  exp ðz=DÞÞ ð2Þ
k k
where k is the thermal conductivity of the crust (e.g. La-
chenbruch, 1970). The ¢rst term on the right-hand side is
the contribution to the temperature caused by conduction
through the lithosphere, as a result of the basal heat £ow
component qo, the second term being the e¡ect of radioac-
tive heating. In addition to the limitations noted above,
this equation assumes that heat £ow only occurs in the ver-
tical direction; in other words, it neglects lateral compo -
nents such as will be induced between adjacent regions
that have di¡erent crustal properties.
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
If, for the time being, we neglect the reduction in k in
the sediments (see above), then takingYo as 2 mWm  3,
qo 5 40 mWm  2, k as 2.5 Wm  1 1C  1 and D as
10 km would give a temperature of 560 1C at 30 km
depth. Increasing D to 15 km would increase this esti-
mate to 660 1C. Alternatively, if k is assumed to be lower,
say 2 Wm  1 1C  1, throughout the radiogenic layer (i.e.
the sedimentary column) for which D is adjusted back
to 10 km, then the temperature at 30 km depth would
be 620 1C, and if k for this layer is reduced further
to 1.5 Wm  1 1C  1 then the temperature at this depth
would increase to 720 1C. On the basis of this brief ana-
lysis, we infer that the Moho temperature beneath the se-
dimentary basins in the present study region is probably in
the range of 600^700 1C; values of Ze used in our mod-
elling will be selected on this basis.
Crustal thickness variations
Madon & Watts (1998) presented crustal- scale gravity pro -
¢les across the Malay basin (Fig. 11). This basin typically
shows a small amount of upper- crustal extension (bo1.5
and probablyo1.3; Fig. 2d), the crust on its £anks (and
those of the adjacent Pattani basin) being 32 km thick.
Gravity modelling indicates that the Moho is 27 km
deep beneath the centre of the Malay basin (Madon et al.,
1999; Fig. 11); the Moho is thus 5 km shallower across
an 200 km wide zone beneath this basin than beneath
its surroundings.
From earlier discussion, a 12 km deep basin, such as the
Malay basin, with at least the upper 8 km of sediment de-
posited without the development of major normal faults,
presents a space problem if isostatic compensation has
been either Airy or £exural with no lateral displacement
of crustal material. If the underlying crust was simply dis-
placed vertically, then a keel of lower crust will underlie the
basin, causing the Moho depth to be greater beneath the
basin than beneath its surroundings, as in Fig. 12b. Alter-
natively, if lower crust has £owed out from beneath the ba-
sin in response to the sediment loading, then no such keel
will be expected; the Moho depth may be the same be-
neath the basin as beneath its surroundings, or may even
be less beneath the basin than beneath its surroundings,
depending on whether or not the out£ow of lower crust oc-
curred under steady- state conditions or not.
As illustrated in Fig.11, the crust beneath the Malay ba-
sin has no lower- crustal keel; in contrast, the Moho is lo -
cally shallower (27 km) than beneath the surroundings to
this basin (32 km). As discussed above, the continental
crust of Southeast Asia is anomalously hot today, and also
shows evidence for having been anomalously hot in the
past. Hence, the crust underlying the Malay basin (and,
by analogy, other basins in the region, such as the Pattani
basin) can be expected to have had the potential to £ow sig-
ni¢cantly during the late Cenozoic. The absence of a low-
er- crustal keel suggests that a signi¢cant out£ow of lower-
crust has occurred from beneath this basin, presumably as
a result of the loading e¡ect of the basin’s own sediment.
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
(a) Gravity profile
20
Calculated
Observed
0
mGal
−30
(b) 0
Sedimentary
basin
10
Crust
km
20
30
Mantle
40
0 100 200 300
km
Fig. 11. (a) Gravity signature and (b) calculated crustal pro¢le
across the Malay basin, redrawn from Madon & Watts (1998, Fig.
13a).The Moho depth is 32 km beneath the rift £anks and
27 km beneath the rift; the maximum thickness of the
Cenozoic sediment is 12 km, of which 8 km is Early Miocene
and younger.The heaves on the normal faults in the upper crust
beneath this basin (Fig. 2d) indicate b 1.3.Taking 32 km as the
crustal thickness before extension, for upper- crustal extension
with b 5 1.3 the minimum thickness of crustal basement
predicted at the end of rifting is 32 km/1.3 or 25 km; with b 5 1.5
(after a generous correction for possible ‘small’ normal faults that
are not resolved in Fig. 2d), it would be 21km.With conventional
Airy isostatic compensation of sediment loading, 12 km of
sediment deposited on crustal basement ranging in thickness
between 21km (b 5 1.5) and 25 km (b 5 1.3) would result in a
Moho depth of 33^37 km, indicating the development of a Moho
‘keel’ (Fig. 12), which is not in fact observed. In contrast, the
observed geometry, with the Moho now 27 km deep beneath
12 km of sediment, indicates only 15 km of crustal basement
beneath the sediment. As a result b calculated from the thinning
of crustal basement, would be 32/15 km or 2.1, much
greater than any value estimated from the normal faulting in the
brittle upper crust.These simple calculations indicate the
systematic di¡erence between the estimates of b, which
characterises many sedimentary basins, and which we suggest is
caused by failure to take outward lower- crustal £ow from beneath
the depocentre into account.
MODELLING OF COUPLING BETWEEN
SEDIMENTATION AND LOWER-
CRUSTAL FLOW
Numerical modelling of lower- crustal £ow undertaken
previously (Westaway, 2002a, Westaway et al., 2004) indi-
cates that a signi¢cant increase in sedimentation rates will
cause the development of a non- steady thermal and mass-
£ux state in the underlying crust, such that the out£ow of
lower crust exceeds the sediment in£ux, causing crustal
thinning and enabling the Moho depth to become shal-
lower beneath the basin than beneath its surroundings, as
in Fig.12a. It is expected that ultimately a new thermal and
mass- £ux steady state will develop in which the crust has
adjusted to the new sedimentation rate, although because
67
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
Fig. 12. Schematic illustrations of the geometrical
consequences of crustal thickness assumptions on crustal- scale
cross- sections for (a) sediment loading compensated by outward
lower- crustal £ow under non- steady- state conditions and (b) the
standard McKenzie model for the evolution of extensional
sedimentary basins. Dot shading in (a) indicates material that is
initially in the upper crust but becomes heated above the
temperature threshold for the brittle^ductile transition as a
result of burial by sediment. Assuming option (b), in many rifts
the lower-crustal keel e¡ect is not strongly evident because the
sediment deposited during thermal subsidence is relatively thin.
Its thickness is thus less than the uplift of the Moho, beneath the
basin, that has been caused by the earlier crustal thinning (panel
bii); any keel e¡ect is thus masked. It is only with very thick post-
rift sequences that this keel e¡ect is predicted to become
signi¢cant (panel biii). In this case, when the assumption of no
change in (basement) crustal thickness during thermal
subsidence is made (the assumption underlying the simpli¢ed
isostasy equation used in the McKenzie model), then the
predicted geometrical consequence is a keel of thicker crust,
reaching deeper beneath a super-deep basin than beneath its
surroundings.
the previous modelling studies (Westaway, 2002a, West-
away et al., 2004) have only concerned timescales within
the Quaternary they have only investigated the initial
non- steady- state situation and not the subsequent adjust-
ment to the new steady state.
To assess the feasibility of isostatic compensation of se-
diment loading by lower- crustal £ow, the Late Cenozoic
68
histories of the Malay and Pattani basins have been mod-
elled using the technique of Westaway (2002a). As illu-
strated in Fig. 10, the Malay basin experienced an 50%
increase in sedimentation rate in the Early Miocene
(24 Ma): from 0.2 to 0.3 mm a  1. The gravity mod-
elling constrains the crustal thickness beneath this basin
and its surroundings, as already noted (Fig. 11). As illu-
strated in Fig. 6a, the Pattani basin experienced a much
more dramatic increase in sedimentation rate around the
same time, from 0.1 to 0.5 mm a  1. Both basins will
be modelled; this modelling will be followed by a sensitiv-
ity analysis that will consider the robustness of the indivi-
dual model solutions.
Cartoons illustrating the geometry of this model have
been published previously, notably as Fig. 10 of Westaway
(2002a) and Fig. 22 of Westaway et al. (2004), and so are not
repeated here. Each basin is represented by a depocentre
of width Ls, separated from an eroding sediment source re-
gion of width Le by a ‘hinge zone’of length Lh.The direction
of sediment transport from the model sediment source re-
gion to the model depocentre is southward, as discussed for
the palaeo-Chao Phraya River system (cf. Leo, 1997; Fig. 7).
Starting values of 300 km each are assumed for Le, Ls ,and
Lh, re£ecting the overall dimensions of the study region
(Fig. 1). These values are later adjusted to investigate the
sensitivity of the model solutions to these initial choices
(see below). However, for all solutions considered, Le 5 Ls ;
thus, the model conserves crustal mass (i.e. no lower crust
or sediment £ows into or out of any boundary of the model).
A corollary to this constraint is that the spatial average ero -
sion rate in the sediment source, Ue, equals Us, the spatial
average sedimentation rate in the depocentre. As the model
is two dimensional, any components of sediment transport
and lower-crustal £ow in the perpendicular direction have
also been neglected.
The model lithosphere has been assigned a nominal
thickness of 100 km, with the crust initially 30-km thick
and the mantle lithosphere 70-km thick. Densities of
rc 5 2700 kg m  3, rm 5 3300 kg m  3, ra 5 3100 kg m  3
and rw 5 1000 kg m  3 are assumed for the continental
crust, mantle lithosphere, asthenosphere and for any sea-
water load over the depocentre. The case of a subaerial,
rather than submarine, depocentre is investigated sepa-
rately by setting the nominal density of the water load to
zero. The sediment deposited in the depocentre is as-
sumed to compact to the same density as the underlying
continental crust; thus, any density di¡erence that may ex-
ist in a real basin between the sediment and the underlying
continental crustal basement is neglected. Likewise, verti-
cal variations in density caused by thermal expansion of
the crust and mantle lithosphere are also neglected. Ac-
cording to Metivier et al. (1999), the typical mean density
of the clasts forming the sediments in Southeast Asia is
2780 kg m  3 and at 3-km depth the average porosity in
sediment is reduced to 5%; the approximate density of
sedimentary rock at 3-km depth should thus be
2640 kg m  3. Most of the density contrast with the ori-
ginal upper crust in a super-deep sedimentary basin is
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
therefore likely to be con¢ned to the uppermost few kilo -
metres of each sedimentary sequence. This means that in
any sediment loading model, the impact of density con-
trast between basement and the sedimentary basin is likely
to be a minor, second- order e¡ect.
Overall, the weight of the crust and mantle lithosphere,
and of any overlying water load, is assumed to be sup-
ported by Airy isostatic compensation in the underlying
asthenosphere. The mantle lithosphere (and brittle upper
crust) are thus assumed to be thin enough that their £exur-
al wavelengths are small compared with the horizontal
length scales of the model; thus, this use of Airy isostatic
compensation is justi¢ed. As the thickness of model man-
tle lithosphere remains constant, it has no net di¡erential
e¡ect on any isostatic calculation; thus, neither this thick-
ness nor the value chosen for r m has any e¡ect on any solu-
tion. The overall isostatic con¢guration of the model at
each time step thus depends on the thickness of the crust
in the model sediment source and depocentre and the
thickness of any water load over the depocentre.The thick-
ness of the crust in both the sediment source and depo -
centre will vary over time. This e¡ect occurs as a result of
the non- steady- state conditions that are considered. Con-
sequently, during each time step for which the response of
the model is calculated, the transfer of mass at the surface
from the sediment source to the depocentre does not ne-
cessarily balance the transfer of mass by lower- crustal £ow
in the opposite direction.
In order to represent the observed increase in sedimen-
tation rates in the Early Miocene, the sedimentation rate is
assumed to undergo a step change between nominal rates
of Uso and Us, at a nominal time of 22 Ma. Starting values
were assumed of Uso 5 0.2 mm a  1 and Us 5 0.3 mm a  1
for the Malay basin, and Uso 5 0.1mm a  1 and
Us 5 0.5 mm a  1 for the Pattani basin, consistent with ear-
lier discussion (Figs 6a and10).The sensitivity of the mod-
els to other rates of sedimentation was also investigated
(see below). The assumption of conservation of mass re-
quires a corresponding step change in erosion rates from
the sediment source. Numerical limitations to the techni-
que in its present form mean that only a single step change
can yet be considered, rather than a succession of step
changes or more complex variations.
Within the model, it is necessary to calculate the depth
to the brittle-ductile transition, which is assumed to cor-
respond to a temperature threshold of 350 1C. This calcu-
lation is carried out using the theory developed in
Appendix B of Westaway (2002a), which solves, at each
time step, the advective di¡usion equation for heat trans-
port within the crust in order to determine the 350 1C iso -
therm. To obtain such solutions, the Moho temperature is
assumed to maintain a nominal, constant value of 700 1C;
the thermal di¡usivity of the crust is set to 1mm2 s  1 (cf.
Parsons & Sclater, 1977).
At the start of each model run, it is assumed that the in-
itial rates of sedimentation and erosion had persisted for
long enough that the model was in a thermal and mass £ux
steady state consistent with these values. Hence, sediment
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
transport balanced lower-crustal £ow in the opposite di-
rection and the geotherm in both regions re£ected stea-
dy- state conditions. Earlier discussion established that,
in reality, at this time the basin was probably still cooling
from its earlier rift phase; thus, its thermal state may well
have been more complex than has been assumed in this
model calculation and may not have been steady. However,
the subsequent non- steady- state perturbation to the ther-
mal state of the crust caused by the ensuing dramatic
changes imposed in rates of sedimentation or erosion are
likely to overwhelm any variations that occurred before-
hand. Hence, this approximation is unlikely to have a sig-
ni¢cant e¡ect on the accuracy of the calculations. For each
time step, the computer program calculates the di¡erence
in depth, and thus pressure, at the base of the brittle upper
crust between the depocentre and sediment source.The re-
sulting out£ow of lower crust from beneath the depocentre
to beneath the sediment source area is then calculated.The
calculation depends on this pressure di¡erence, on the
length scales of the model, on the thickness of the lower-
crustal layer in the sediment source and depocentre, and
on the e¡ective viscosity Ze assumed for the lower- crustal
layer. After calculating the resulting transfer of lower crust
from beneath the depocentre to beneath the sediment
source, the computer program adjusts the crustal thickness
in both model regions, and thus calculates the appropriate
isostatic adjustments to these crustal-thickness changes.
Under the non-steady-state conditions that develop dur-
ing model runs, the out£ow of lower crust will exceed the
in£ux of sediment and lead to net crustal thinning (and
thus subsidence) beneath the depocentre. Corresponding
net crustal thickening (and thus, uplift of the eroding land
surface) occurs in the sediment source area.
All solutions indicate that the initial non-steady-state
conditions created at the start of each model run gradually
decay as the model region adjusts towards a new steady state
appropriate for the new rates of erosion and deposition.The
characteristic time-scale required for this adjustment de-
pends on the imposed change in sedimentation rate, on
the length scale of the model, and on the e¡ective viscosity
assumed for the model lower crust. In all cases, net transfer
of crust initially occurs from beneath the depocentre to be-
neath the sediment source. However, a characteristic of this
type of model is that a near-constant (subaerial) level of the
depositional surface can be maintained, broadly consistent
with the observational record from the study region. Each
layer of sediment in e¡ect dynamically creates the accom-
modation space for the next layer of sediment, plus a slight
excess that gives rise to the net changes in crustal thickness
and surface altitude that are predicted.
Modelling the Malay basin
We begin by modelling the Malay basin, as the available
data provide clear indications of overall sedimentation
rates (Fig. 10) and crustal thickness variations (Fig. 11),
even though other details are less well constrained than
for the Pattani basin. Figure13 illustrates an initial solution
69
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

Fig. 13. First set of solutions for the history of the Malay basin, using the initial set of parameter values discussed in the text. Rates of
erosion and sedimentation are assumed to have changed from 0.2 to 0.3 mm a  1 at 22 Ma. Solutions also assume no water loading, with
e¡ective viscosity of the lower crust Ze 8 (M1), 4 (M2), 2 (M3) and1 (M4)  1018 Pa s. (a) Predicted rate of change of altitude of the eroding
land surface that supplies the basin’s sediment. (b) Predicted change in altitude, consistent with (a). (c) Predicted rate of decrease in
altitude of the sediment surface in the depocentre. (d) Predicted decrease in altitude, consistent with (c). (e) Predicted rate of subsidence
of the Moho beneath the depocentre (negative values indicate Moho uplift). (f) Predicted subsidence of the Moho beneath the
depocentre (negative values indicate Moho uplift), consistent with (e). (g) Predicted variation in crustal thickness beneath the depocentre
(including the thickness of sediment deposited as part of the crust). (h) Predicted variation in the parameter Dp/Ze, where Dp is the
di¡erence between the pressure at the base of the brittle layer beneath the depocentre and beneath the sediment source (positive values
meaning greater pressure beneath the depocentre).

70 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

Fig. 14. Second set of solutions for the history of the Malay basin, using the same notation and parameter values as for Fig. 13, except
that water loading is now imposed.

for the Malay basin, in which the model sedimentation rate
increases from Uo 5 0.2 mm a  1 to U 5 0.3 mm a  1 at
22 Ma, with no water loading. The model depocentre,
hinge zone and eroding sediment source each have nom-
inal dimensions of 300 km. Four values of Ze for the lower
crust are considered, 8 (M1), 4 (M2), 2 (M3) and 1
(M4)  1018 Pa s, which correspond to Moho temperatures
of 611, 634, 658 and 684 1C, using the parameterisation of
temperature-dependent lower-crustal viscosity by West-
away (1998). During the course of each model run, a total
thickness of 0.3 mm a  1  22 Ma or 6.6 km of sediment is
deposited in the model depocentre, balancing the erosion
of an equivalent mass of material from the sediment source.
It can be seen that the resulting isostatic adjustment, taking
account of the net £ow of lower crust from beneath the de-
pocentre to beneath the sediment source, involves net
crustal thinning by 2.2 km beneath the depocentre and
an equivalent net crustal thickening beneath the sediment

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 71

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
source. The results thus roughly match the observed pre-
sent-day di¡erence in crustal thickness between the Malay
basin and its surroundings (Fig. 11). The assumption of
overall Airy isostatic compensation and the choice of den-
sities, speci¢ed earlier, means that the calculated crustal
thinning beneath the depocentre has been accommodated
by 1.9 km of Moho uplift and 0.3 km of overall decrease
in the level of the sediment surface at the top of the rock
column. The assumption of volume balance means that
the eroding land surface in the sediment source is pre-
dicted to have uplifted on the same timescale by 0.3 km.
Taking account of the in£ux of sediment as well as the out-
£ow of lower- crust, the pre- existing crustal column
is predicted to have thinned beneath this model depocentre
from 30 to 21.2 km, an e¡ect that (if the existence
of lower- crustal £ow were not recognised) could be mista-
ken for a consequence of extension with b 30/21.2
or 1.4.
Inspection of the four curves in each part of Fig.13 indi-
cates that the extent to which this coupled isostatic-ad-
justment process has approached completion, and the
resulting extent to which a new steady- state situation has
developed consistent with the imposed rates of surface
processes, varies quite strongly with the choice of Ze. For
the smallest value investigated, 1018 Pa s (curve M4), the
process reached 90% completion around 5 million years
after it started, by 17 Ma, whereas for the largest,
8  1018 Pa s (curve M1), the process is predicted to have
barely reached 90% completion at the present day, 22 mil-
lion years after it started. These calculated time-lags sup-
port earlier deductions from studies on shorter timescales
(e.g. Westaway, 2004b; Westaway et al., 2004, 2006b)
that once Late Cenozoic climate change began to a¡ect
rates of erosion (and, thus, sedimentation) signi¢cantly,
around 3 Ma, subsequent landscape evolution and the
associated development of topographic relief has typically
not involved steady- state conditions, in contrast to what
have been traditionally assumed in the bulk of the geomor-
phological literature.
Figure 14 illustrates a second solution for the Malay ba-
sin, for which the model parameters are all the same
as before, except that water loading is now imposed, it
being assumed that at the start of the model run the
depocentre was at sea level and so any subsequent decrease
in the level of the sediment surface has been covered
by an equivalent layer of water, which loads the under-
lying crust. Post-Early Miocene £uctuations in global
sea level are thus neglected. The overall response of
the model is now more complex, as the presence of
water-loading means that the predicted responses of the
depocentre and sediment source are no longer mirror
images of each other. The net crustal thinning be-
neath the depocentre is now 2.3 km, accommodated
by 1.9 km of Moho uplift and 0.4 km of overall de-
crease in the level of the sediment surface at the top of
the rock column. Although the same ( 0.3 km) to ¢rst or-
der, the mean altitude of the land surface is predicted to
have uplifted by a slightly greater distance than before,
72
296 m compared with 275 m, because of the additional ef-
fect of the water load over the depocentre ‘squeezing out’
more lower crust than before.
Modelling the Pattani basin
Figure15 illustrates an initial solution for the Pattani basin,
for which the model sedimentation rate is set to increase
from Uo 5 0.1mm a  1 to U 5 0.5 mm a  1 at 22 Ma, with
no water loading. The model depocentre, hinge zone and
eroding sediment source are each 300 km wide, as before.
However, the four values of Ze considered for the lower
crust are adjusted to 4 (M1), 2 (M2), 1 (M3) and 0.5
(M4)  1018 Pa s, the latter corresponding to a Moho tem-
perature of 711 1C (Westaway, 1998). During the course of
each model run, a total thickness of 0.5 mm a  1  22 Ma
or 11km of sediment is thus deposited in the model depo -
centre, balancing the erosion of an equivalent mass of
material from the sediment source.The resulting isostatic
adjustment, taking account of the net £ow of lower crust
from beneath the depocentre to beneath the sediment
source, now involves net crustal thinning by 3.6 km be-
neath the depocentre and an equivalent net crustal thick-
ening beneath the sediment source. This calculated
crustal thinning beneath the depocentre has been accom-
modated by 3.1km of Moho uplift and 0.5 km of over-
all decrease in level of the sediment surface at the top of
the rock column. Taking account of the in£ux of sediment
as well as the out£ow of lower- crust, the pre- existing crus-
tal column is predicted to have thinned beneath this model
depocentre from 30 to 15.4 km, an e¡ect that (if the exis-
tence of lower-crustal £ow were not recognised) could be
mistaken for a consequence of extension with b 30/15.4
or 1.9.
Inspection of the four curves in each part of Fig.15 indi-
cates that, as before, the extent to which this coupled iso -
static-adjustment process has approached completion,
and the resulting extent to which a new steady state situa-
tion has developed consistent with the imposed rates of
surface processes, varies signi¢cantly with the choice of
Ze. For the smallest values investigated, 5  1017 Pa s (curve
M4) and 1018 Pa s (curve M3), the process reached 90%
completion around 7 million years after it started,
by 15 Ma; as before, if Ze was set to 8  1018 Pa s (not
shown), the process would be predicted to have barely
reached 90% completion at the present day, 22 million
years after it started. The greater time lag for the lowest-
viscosity models re£ects the fact that the much greater im-
posed change in sedimentation rate placed the coupled sys-
tem farther out of steady state, and the required response to
regain a steady state thus involves the £ow of much greater
volumes of lower crust than before, which takes longer.The
maximum predicted pressure di¡erences (and thus rates of
lower- crustal £ow) between the bases of the brittle layer be-
neath the depocentre and beneath the sediment source do
not scale in any simple way between the models; for Ze
4  1018 Pa s, for instance, it is only marginally greater in
Fig. 15 than in Fig. 13 (43 MPa instead of 38 MPa).
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
Figure16 illustrates a second model for the Pattani basin,
with the same parameters as before, except that water load-
ing is imposed over the model depocentre, as for Fig. 14.
The predicted overall isostatic adjustment now involves
net crustal thinning by 3.8 km beneath the depocentre,
accommodated by 3.1km of Moho uplift and 0.7 km
of overall decrease in level of the sediment surface at the
top of the rock column. Although the same (0.5 km) to
¢rst order, the mean altitude of the land surface is predicted
to have uplifted by a slightly greater distance than
before, 490 m compared with 455 m, because of the addi-
tional e¡ect of the water load over the depocentre.
For Ze 4  1018 Pa s, the maximum predicted pressure
di¡erences between the bases of the brittle layer beneath
the depocentre and beneath the sediment source are mar-
ginally smaller in Fig.16 than in Fig.14 ( 40 MPa instead of
43 MPa).
Sensitivity analysis
To assess sensitivity to assumed values of Ze, we note that
the geological evidence (discussed earlier) requires the on-
set of marine conditions around the Early to Middle Mio -
cene boundary (18 Ma) in the Malay basin and around
the start of the Late Pliocene (3 Ma) in the Pattani basin.
Neglecting complications due to glacio - eustatic sea-level
variations (caused, for instance, by the growth of the Ant-
arctic ice sheet since the Early Miocene), the present-day
bathymetry indicates no more than a few tens of metres
of lowering in the level of the sediment surface in each ba-
sin since each of these points in time. As the Malay basin
has been seawater loaded for most of the modelled time-
scale, we regard Fig. 14 as our preferred set of runs for it.
Models M1 and M2 seem to require too much increase in
the water depth covering the basin surface since the Early
Miocene and model M4 too little; thus, our preferred so -
lution for the Malay basin is model M3, for which Ze is
2  1018 Pa s, indicating an estimated Moho temperature
of 658 1C (cf.Westaway, 1998). Conversely, as the Pattani ba-
sin has not been seawater loaded for most of the modelled
timescale, we regard Fig.15 as our preferred set of runs for
it. Models M2^M4 seem to require insu⁄cient increase in
the water depth covering the basin surface since the Late
Pliocene; thus, our preferred solution for the Pattani basin
is model M1, for which Ze is 4  1018 Pa s, indicating an es-
timated Moho temperature of 634 1C (cf. Westaway, 1998).
These Moho temperature estimates are in good agree-
ment with what was expected from earlier analysis of
the heat £ow.
However, in detail, the idea that each model region is
characterised by a single value of Ze, which does not vary
spatially or over time, is of course oversimplistic. As the
technique predicts post-rift thinning of the crust beneath
the depocentre, keeping the mantle lithosphere thickness
constant, it will result in a progressive decrease in the local
Moho temperature; the corresponding crustal thickening
beneath the sediment source will likewise result in a local
Moho temperature rise. Thus, over time, Ze will decrease
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
beneath the depocentre and increase beneath the sedi-
ment source, so, even if Ze is considered constant through-
out the model region at the start of each model run, as time
progresses, lateral variations will develop as a consequence
of the lower- crustal £ow that is being modelled. For in-
stance, given the values assumed for other model
parameters, the 3.6 km of thinning predicted since
22 Ma for the crust beneath the Pattani basin (Fig. 15)
would imply a decrease in Moho temperature of no more
than 25 1C on this timescale. Given the viscosity^
temperature calibration that is being used, this would cor-
respond to an approximate doubling in Ze. As the main
constraint used to derive Z e for this basin (see above) has
been the increase in water depth since the Late Pliocene
(i.e. a constraint relating to the basin’s most recent evolu-
tion), it is probable that Ze was somewhat less, say
2  1018 Pa s, in the Late Early Miocene, indicating an
estimated Moho temperature at the start of the model
run of 660 1C. Similar-magnitude corrections apply to
the crust beneath the sediment source in this solution
and to the crust beneath both parts of each of the other
solutions.
As already noted, another limitation of the present ana-
lysis is that it does not incorporate lateral variations, or
variations over time (other than the initial step changes
that are imposed), in rates of erosion or sedimentation.
There is thus no possibility, given the present form of
the technique, of investigating the consequences of (for
instance) an increase in sedimentation rates in the Early
Miocene being followed by a decrease in the Late Mio -
cene, as is indicated in Fig. 6 and may also be expected gi-
ven the conclusions of Clift et al. (2002) regarding the e¡ect
on erosion rates of climate change.
Regarding sensitivity to sedimentation rates, Fig. 17
illustrates a third model for the Pattani basin, de¢ned
with the same parameters as Fig. 15, except the
model change in sedimentation rate is from 0.1mm a  1
before 22 Ma to 0.3 mm a  1, instead of to 0.5 mm a  1. The
predicted overall isostatic adjustment now involves net
crustal thinning by 2.2 km beneath the depocentre, ac-
commodated by 1.9 km of Moho uplift and 0.3 km of
overall decrease in level of the sediment surface at the top
of the rock column. In all observable respects, this overall
isostatic response is indeed very similar to that observed
for the solution for the Malay basin in Fig. 13, although
the latter involved an increase in model sedimentation
rates from 0.2 to 0.3 mm a  1. Although the curves in Fig.
17 are tending to essentially the same limiting values as
those in Fig. 13, the detailed shapes of the two sets of
curves are di¡erent. For instance, for Ze 1018 Pa s it takes
6 million years to reach 90% of the ultimate steady- state
response involving a 275 m reduction in surface altitude of
the sedimentary column in Fig.17, compared with 5 mil-
lion years in Fig. 13.The slower adjustment towards the ¢ -
nal steady state evident in Fig. 17 presumably results from
the fact that the larger-magnitude change in sedimenta-
tion rates imposed in Fig. 17 threw the system farther out
of its initial steady state, so it takes longer to recover. This
73
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

Fig. 15. First set of solutions for the history of the Pattani basin, using the same notation and parameter values as for Fig.13, except that
rates of erosion and sedimentation are assumed to have changed from 0.1 to 0.5 mm a  1 at 22 Ma.

result, that the ultimate response of such coupled models
depends on the imposed new sedimentation rate (plus
other parameters, such as the chosen densities used in
the model) and not the initial sedimentation rate, was un-
expected. As discussed in detail by Westaway (2002a), the
initial rate of response of such coupled models is in pro -
portion to the imposed change in sedimentation rates
and does not depend directly on the rate either before or
after this change.
Figure 18 shows a ¢nal solution, with the same model
parameters as for Fig.17, except that water loading has been
imposed. As before, the overall response of this model is
very similar to that in Fig. 14, for instance the ultimate re-
sponse involves a 437 m reduction in surface altitude of the
sedimentary column, although the timescale required for
this response (for a given value of Ze) is slightly longer.
To facilitate comparison, all solutions discussed so far
have assumed Le 5 300 km, Lh 5 300 km and Ls 5 300 km.

74 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

Fig. 16. Second set of solutions for the history of the Pattani basin, using the same notation and parameter values as for Fig. 15, except
that water loading is now imposed.

However, we have also investigated the dependence of our
results on model length scales. For instance, increasing Le
and Ls to 400 km in a model that is otherwise the same as
that in Fig. 15 would maintain the same overall response
(including, for instance, a decrease in altitude of the sedi-
ment surface by 456 m), but its recovery to its new steady
state would reach 90% completion (for Ze 5  1017 Pa s)
after 7.0 million years rather than 6.7 million years;
conversely, decreasing Le and Ls to 200 km would reduce
the time required for 90% completion to 6.4 million
years. It is thus concluded that the results of this model-
ling exercise for overall amounts of vertical crustal motion
are relatively insensitive to changes in scale of this order. In
contrast, predicted initial rates of vertical crustal motion
are quite sensitive to choices of length scale, as previously
noted (Westaway, 2002a; Westaway et al., 2004). For in-
stance, increasing Le and Ls from 200 to 300 to 400 km in
this manner would cause the predicted initial subsidence

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 75

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway

Fig. 17. Third set of solutions for the history of the Pattani basin, using the same notation and parameter values as for Fig.13, except that
rates of erosion and sedimentation are assumed to have changed from 0.1 to 0.3 mm a  1 at 22 Ma.

rate for the depocentre (for Ze 5  1017 Pa s) to decrease
from 0.27 to 0.16 and 0.11mm a  1. As the main aim of the
present exercise is to assess whether the observed total
thicknesses of sediment can be regarded as consequences
of outward lower- crustal £ow, we thus do not devote
further consideration to e¡ects of length scale.
It is thus evident that the present study merely repre-
sents a ¢rst- order analysis of this problem. The key out-
come at this stage is not the particular set of parameter
values estimated, but the demonstration of the extent to
which lower-crustal £ow is expected to have occurred in
this study region and the magnitude of the di¡erence made
by it relative to conventional modelling solutions.
DISCUSSION
The idea that out£ow of crust or mantle from beneath a se-
dimentary basin can accommodate sediment loading has

76 r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84

 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia

Fig. 18. Fourth set of solutions for the history of the Pattani basin, using the same notation and parameter values as for Fig. 17, except
that water loading is now imposed.

been around in one form or another for over a century (e.g.
Herschel, 1837; Bott, 1971, 1979; Strobach, 1979; Westaway,
1994a). However, the McKenzie (1978) model and its subse-
quent variants have been viewed as adequately explaining
intracontinental rift and passive margin subsidence; out-
£ow models have thus been considered unnecessary or
mechanically unfeasible. Previous modelling has high-
lighted discrepancies between predictions of the simple
McKenzie model and evidence from many basins, result-
ing in many suggestions regarding how to account for
these di¡erences, some of which have been incorporated
into new variants of the technique, for instance: time-de-
pendent stretching (e.g. Jarvis & McKenzie, 1980); non-
uniform stretching (e.g. Hellinger & Sclater, 1983); £exural
isostasy (e.g. Kusznir et al., 1991; Roberts et al., 1993); inac-
curate palaeowater depths (e.g. Bertram & Milton, 1989) or
density changes (possibly related to metamorphism or
mineral phase changes) within the crust or mantle litho -

r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84 77

C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
sphere (e.g. Cloetingh & Kooi,1992; Petrini et al., 2001).Yet,
the fundamentals of the model remain intact (e.g. White,
1990).The strong belief in the robustness of the McKenzie
model and its variants has resulted in estimates of upper-
crustal extension (from heaves of large normal faults) being
doubted when they di¡er from estimates derived from
backstripping of sediment thicknesses, assuming that the
latter are explicable using the McKenzie model. This view
is manifest, for instance, in arguments that small normal
faults (below the resolution of seismic sections) can ac-
count for a large percentage of crustal extension (e.g. Mar-
rett & Allmendinger, 1992), bringing it into line with
estimates derived from sediment thicknesses assuming
the McKenzie model. Such arguments may well be appro -
priate for explaining discrepancies in some sedimentary
basins. Conversely, the latitude available in these solutions
may instead mask systematic errors that arise because
some other process, such as lower- crustal £ow, has not
been considered. The key question is whether all these
variants represent genuine improvements in technique,
or merely re£ect the tendency (noted by Thomas Kuhn
in ‘The Structure of Scienti¢c Revolutions’ [Kuhn, 1962,
pp. 80^81]) for supporters of any ageing scienti¢c
concept to introduce ad hoc modi¢cations to try to
eliminate any of its apparent inability to account for
evidence.
In some regions, local factors have been identi¢ed that
can readily explain anomalies relative to the McKenzie
model. An example is the change in the environment of
the central North Sea from subaerial deposition in the Pa-
laeocene to turbidite deposition in the Eocene, this change
marking an increase in both sedimentation rate and bathy-
metry. It has been suggested (e.g. Joy, 1992; Nadin & Kusz-
nir, 1995) that uplift of Scotland by the Iceland mantle
plume resulted in faster erosion, leading to the more rapid
sedimentation in the North Sea. If this had not happened,
this post-rift sequence would be thinner than it now is,
and the discrepancy relative to the Southeast Asian basins
in Fig.10 even greater.The increase in bathymetry that ac-
companied this increase in sedimentation rate is as ex-
pected if isostatic compensation of this sediment load
was accompanied by out£ow of lower- crust under non-
steady- state conditions, thus mimicking the behaviour of
the models presented in this study.This e¡ect should thus
arguably be considered in future modelling of this set of
coupled processes; any component of out£ow of lower-
crust from beneath the North Sea to beneath Scotland
would have helped to maintain dynamically the relief and
thus the sediment supply. Another well-known anomaly
is the Quaternary subsidence of the North Sea and other
basins on the European continental shelf, such as those
beneath the Baltic Sea and Celtic Sea. Van Wees & Cloe-
tingh (1996) explained this e¡ect as a consequence of an in-
crease in the compressive stress in the Quaternary, for some
independent reason, increasing the tendency of the litho -
sphere to buckle; any locality that became warped down-
ward by this process would subsequently act as a sediment
trap. More recently, this increased sedimentation has been
78
explained instead, along with the contemporaneous uplift
of adjoining land areas, as a consequence of lower- crustal
£ow induced under the non- steady-state conditions that
have followed increases in rates of surface processes caused
by long-timescale climate change (e.g. Westaway, 2001,
2002b, c, 2005a; Westaway et al., 2002, 2006a).
It is understandable that the assumptions of the
McKenzie model can produce variations between ob-
served and calculated estimates of amounts of extension.
However, what is troubling is that the lithospheric
thinning calculated from backstripping is, in almost all
cases, greater than the observed upper- crustal thinning.
This is not a random, but a systemic, variation.We suggest
that this systemic variation is at least partly explicable as a
consequence of sediment loading driving £ow of the lower
crust out from beneath depocentres, and that the problem
thus lies in rigid adherence in the McKenzie model to the
use of simpli¢ed equations for calculating isostatic equili-
brium. These equations incorporate the incorrect as-
sumption of no change in thickness of crustal basement
during post-rift subsidence.
The aim of this paper is thus to re- open the debate re-
garding subsidence mechanisms in sedimentary basins.
The Pattani and Malay basins are examples of extreme, ra-
pid subsidence in a post-rift setting. They thus expose
problems with some assumptions in the McKenzie model
that are much more apparent than in many other rifts.The
keel e¡ect (Fig. 12) suggests that the assumption of con-
stant thickness of crustal basement during post-rift subsi-
dence can be incorrect. One way of explaining this problem
would be to require large amounts of lower- crustal thin-
ning during the syn-rift stage, which are considerably in
excess of the amount of observed upper- crustal extension
(e.g. Driscoll & Karner, 1998; Madon & Watts, 1998; Clift
et al., 2002). As an alternative, we propose instead that low-
er- crustal £ow driven by sediment loading during the post-
rift stage is the solution to the keel problem. The calcula-
tions presented in this study indicate that such £ow can oc-
cur from beneath a basin following extension, at the same
time as conventional thermal subsidence may be expected,
and can greatly enhance the post-rift subsidence. This
means that the beta factor derived from backstripping of
post-rift sediment is not necessarily an indicator of the
amount of crustal thinning that occurred during extension,
unlike for a McKenzie (1978) type model.
There are two potential di⁄culties with this interpreta-
tion. First, as already noted, previous studies (e.g. Hellin-
ger & Sclater, 1983; White & McKenzie, 1989; Driscoll &
Karner, 1998; Baxter et al., 2001; Davis & Kusznir, 2002,
2004; Karner et al., 2003; Kusznir et al., 2004) have noted
this systematic error between estimates of extension and
have suggested that the explanation involves depth-de-
pendent extension, for instance with more extension in
the lower crust than in the upper crust. However, there is
no obvious reason why the crust should behave in this way
(unless, of course, the lower-crust is allowed to £ow during
the syn-rift stage as well as during the post-rift stage), and
there is also a fundamental problem balancing crustal
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
 Subsidence in the super-deep Pattani and Malay basins of Southeast Asia
extension across extensional provinces if itvaries with depth.
Second, during the syn-rift stage, it has been argued that
if regional lower- crustal £ow occurs, then it should be
from the thicker rift £anks towards the rift, not away from
it (e.g. Artyushkov, 1973; Knott 2001). By neglecting the ef-
fects of surface processes on the depth of the base of the
brittle layer then senses of lower- crustal £ow will ob-
viously be from thicker crust to thinner crust. However, if
one considers these e¡ects, then the sense of lower- crustal
£ow will be determined by the relative importance of rates
of extension and of sediment loading (e.g. Westaway, 1998,
1999). If extension is very fast and/or rates of surface pro -
cesses are minimal, then lower crust will be expected to
£ow into crust that has extended, from its surroundings
(Fig. 3a). This e¡ect is indeed the basis for modern expla-
nations of how low-angle normal faulting can be mechani-
cally feasible (e.g. Westaway, 1998, 1999, 2005b; McKenzie
etal., 2000; see also below). However, if rates of surface pro -
cesses are signi¢cant and extension is slow (or if one is in-
vestigating a sag basin that formed without any extension),
then (as noted above) lateral variations, induced by the sur-
face processes, in pressure at the base of the brittle layer
will predominate over any direct e¡ect of extension. The
pressure will thus be greater at the base of the brittle layer
beneath the basin than beneath its surroundings and the
resulting pressure gradient will drive lower- crustal £ow
out from beneath the basin. Recent numerical modelling
studies (e.g. Westaway, 2002a; Westaway et al., 2004) indi-
cate that, even in the rapidly extending Aegean extensional
province, loading e¡ects of surface processes are more im-
portant than the direct consequences of crustal thinning
in determining senses of lower-crustal £ow and thus in
establishing the overall isostatic balance.
Comparison with previous work
We now compare and contrast the details of our numerical
modelling with those reported in previous investigations
of lower- crustal £ow. We select for this comparison the
views expressed in recent papers by McKenzie et al.
(2000), Maggi et al. (2000) and McKenzie & Jackson (2002).
This sequence of publications has indeed led to the general
validity of the ‘jelly sandwich’ model for the continental
lithosphere being questioned (e.g. Jackson, 2002).
The McKenzie et al. (2000) study was primarily con-
cerned with the conditions that can permit normal faults
to develop with low-angle (o 301) initial dips. They
showed that a key aspect of this mechanical explanation is
the likely presence of lower- crustal £ow, directed from the
footwall to the hanging-wall of such structures.This result
is in accordance with other analyses of the same problem,
such as those by Westaway (1998, 1999). McKenzie et al.
(2000) argued that for lower- crustal £ow to be important,
the viscosity of the lower crust (which they represented as
an isoviscous layer) must be signi¢cantly less than that of
the asthenosphere.This also seems reasonable, and corre-
sponds with a point that had been made previously: that
deformation of the weakest layer present in any region will
r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Basin Research, 18, 51^84
act as a mechanism for isostatic compensation (e.g. West-
away, 1994a). However, most of the analysis expressed by
McKenzie et al. (2000) used relative values of the lower-
crustal and asthenospheric viscosities, and was unspeci¢c
as to what actual viscosity is likely in either layer.They jus-
ti¢ed this approach on the grounds that there is such great
uncertainty as to what values to use that making any such
estimate seemed futile. However, at one stage they indi-
cated that an appropriate value for the viscosity in the low-
er continental crust was 3  1020 Pa s. An alternative
approach to this problem of uncertainty in rheological
laws was the reanalysis by Westaway (1998) of existing
rock-mechanical data, subject to the constraint of ¢tting a
temperature-dependent linear rheological law in the limit
of low strain rate. This analysis gave rise to the procedure
for calibrating viscosity against temperature and, thus, for
de¢ning Ze, that has been used in our present study. A ma-
jor aim of subsequent software system development for
modelling coupling between surface processes and lower-
crustal £ow has been to test whether the viscosity estimates
derived from this procedure are appropriate; in particular,
to test whether Ze is typically as low as 1018 Pa s in re-
gions of relatively hot continental crust (Moho tempera-
ture 650 1C). The consistency between observations
and model predictions suggests strongly that this is so
(e.g. Klein et al., 1997; Westaway et al., 2004). We thus see
no point in displaying results in any of our Figures for Ze
as high as 3  1020 Pa s, for comparison with McKenzie
et al. (2000). However, it is clear that if Ze within the conti-
nental crust was typically as high as this, then lower crustal
£ow in response to surface processes would be a marginal
process at most and could not possibly sustain the forma-
tion of the super-deep basins that have developed in
Southeast Asia during the Late Cenozoic. Both the West-
away (1998) viscosity calibration and our own modelling
suggest that such a high value is inappropriate for hot crust
like that in the present study region. Conversely,
Ze4 1020 Pa s would be reasonable for a relatively cold
crust, such as that beneath the London Platform of South-
east England, with a surface heat £ow o 50 mWm  2
and a Moho temperature of o 500 1C (cf. Westaway
et al., 2002, 2006a). A ¢nal di¡erence between the present
approach and that of McKenzie et al. (2000) concerns the
horizontal scale of lower- crustal £ow. They inferred that
its scale is determined by the thickness of the lower-crus-
tal layer, and that it operates most e¡ectively over distances
of the order of 10 times this layer thickness, or 100^
200 km. In the situations that we analyse, the scale of the
lower- crustal £ow is instead determined by the scale of
the surface processes that are inducing it.
The report by Maggi et al. (2000) compared depth dis-
tributions of seismicity and e¡ective elastic thickness (Te)
estimates derived from global topography to argue that
the strength of continental lithosphere predominantly re-
sides in the upper crust, with the mantle lithosphere being
relatively weak.This model contrasts with the view held in
almost all other Earth Science literature from the previous
two decades ^ that most strength resides in the mantle
79
C. K. Morley and R.Westaway
lithosphere. McKenzie & Jackson (2002) suggested on this
basis that the mantle lithosphere typically has a lower visc-
osity than does the lower crust, from which they deduced
that lower- crustal £ow does not occur in most regions of
continental crust. In their view, lower- crustal £ow is only
possible in anomalous regions such as low-angle normal
fault zones (cf. McKenzie et al., 2000), where some local
process such as magmatism or metasomatism has reduced
the viscosity of the lower crust. However, other potential
explanations exist for why Te is typically much less than
the thickness of the seismogenic layer (e.g. Kusznir et al.,
1991; Westaway, 1992, 2002b). Furthermore, the method of
using length scales of topography to estimate Te has also
been criticised (e.g. Westaway, 2002b). This criticism ar-
gues that if topography within the continental lithosphere
is typically dynamically supported by coupling between
surface processes and lower- crustal £ow, then the asso -
ciated stress ¢eld is very di¡erent from that predicted by
conventional elastic analysis. In this case, the spatial scale
and magnitude of topography are determined by the spa-
tial scale and rate of surface processes and not by the
strength of the underlying crust. Thus, in e¡ect, Maggi
et al. (2000) assumed as a starting point for their analysis
that lower- crustal £ow played no part in the development
of the topography that they analysed, whereas McKenzie &
Jackson (2002) deduced from this analysis of topography
that lower-crustal £ow typically does not occur within
the continents. Overall, these two publications thus form
a circular argument, although this is only apparent
when both are considered together; individually, each
seems to lead from a clear starting point to a well-de¢ned
conclusion.
CONCLUSIONS
The Pattani and Malay basins in Southeast Asia have de-
veloped in the Late Cenozoic in regions a¡ected by mod-
erate amounts of Early Cenozoic crustal extension. Up
to 12 km of sediment has accumulated in these basins,
most of it following increases in sedimentation rates in
the Early Miocene. Using a coupled modelling technique
that enables calculation of e¡ects of surface processes on
lateral variations in pressure at the base of the brittle upper
crust, we suggest that this Late Cenozoic sediment loading
has driven outward lower-crustal £ow from beneath these
basins. This sediment loading has thus been isostatically
compensated by removal of crustal material at depth, ex-
plaining why no Moho ‘keel’ exists beneath these ‘super-
deep’ basins. Calculations presented in this study take into
account the non- steady thermal state that developed with-
in the crust following increased rates of sediment loading
in the Early Miocene. The results indicate that the re-
quired isostatic adjustment causes the out£ow of lower
crust to exceed the in£ux of sediment, causing several
kilometres of net crustal thinning beneath each basin dur-
ing this adjustment process. Conventional isostatic calcu-
lations, using the McKenzie (1978) model for sedimentary
80
basin formation or any of its derivatives, ignore lower-
crustal £ow and treat the Late Cenozoic sedimentation in
these basins as purely a consequence of thermal subsi-
dence. If out£ow of lower- crust has been signi¢cant, as
we suggest, such calculations will overestimate the
amounts of Early Cenozoic extension if set to match the
Late Cenozoic sediment thicknesses. This systematic er-
ror has previously been inferred from analysis of other
sedimentary basins (e.g. Westaway, 1994a), and is particu-
larly clear for these ‘super-deep’ basins, due to the local
combination of hot lower- crust, which thus £ows very
readily, and high sediment £uxes related to the climate of
Southeast Asia (see also Hall & Nichols, 2002; Hall & Mor-
ley, 2004). Our results indicate that lower-crustal £ow is a
widespread process within the continental crust, and will
thus also a¡ect the formation of other sedimentary basins
and other geological structures worldwide.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study contributes to IGCP 518 ‘Fluvial sequences as
evidence for landscape and climatic evolution in the Late
Cenozoic’. PTTEP, Unocal, and ChevronTexaco are grate-
fully acknowledged for providing subsurface data on the
onshore and o¡shore basins of Thailand over many years.
We thank the University of Brunei Darussalam for provid-
ing funding for some of the research.We also thank Robert
Hall and Mike Sandiford for thoughtful and constructive
reviews.
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