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IX. CIRCUM-INDONESIA

The Circum- Indonesia bibliography chapter is subdivided into sixteen areas, divided into two pdfs for ease of download.

Chapter IXa of Bibliography 7.0 contains 521 pages with 4109 references on the geology of areas surrounding Indonesia in the SE Asia region (not including North Borneo, Papua New Guinea and SE Asia Regional, which are grouped with other Indonesia chapters). It contains 9 sub-chapters:

Additional Circum-Indonesia papers from the Australia-Pacific sides East, SE and South of Indonesia are listed in a separate Volume IXb, which is subdivided in 4 chapters: SW Pacific (incl. New Caledonia, Solomon Islands), NE Indian Ocean, NW Australia margin and NE Australia margin).

The reason for including these titles in this Bibliography of Indonesia geology is that the regional geology of Indonesian regions can be better understood with knowledge of the geology across its borders. Many geological similarities exist between the geology of parts of Indonesia and adjacent regions.

The attached pdfs consists of both a detailed bibliography as well as lengthy introductions for each of the sub-chapters.

Download pdf - IXa. CIRCUM INDONESIA (7.80 MB)


Download pdf - IXb. CIRCUM INDONESIA (4.78 MB)

IX.1. Andaman Sea region

Sub-chapter IX.1. of Bibliography 7.0 contains 244 references on the geology of the Andaman Sea region. An elegant review paper on the region is Curray (2005).

The area of the Andaman islands and Andaman Sea continuation of the forearc and volcanic arc regions of the Sumatra/ Sunda Arc subduction system. Subduction in this sector is highly oblique, which led to diminished volcanic arc activity and to the development of a Neogene back-arc oceanic spreading center/ pull-apart basin at the NE ternmination of the Great Sumatra Fault zone, between the volcanic arc and the Malay Peninsula/ Peninsular Thailand.

The Andaman islands are emergent parts of the Andaman- Nicobar Ridge, an outer arc accretionary prism of the Sunda Arc subduction zone. It contains Paleogene (Andaman Flysch) and Neogene bathyal turbiditic deposits and fragments of Cretaceous-age Neotethyan ophiolites, which presumably are a continuation of the ophiolites of the Naga Hills at the Eastern margin of the Indian Plate and similar ophiolites on the Sumatran outer arc islands (Acharyya and Sengupta (1990, 1991).

There is some active or recent arc volcanism at the Barren Island and Narcondam volcanoes, which rise from 1000- 2300m deep seafloor of the Andaman Sea.(Streck et al. 2010, Bandopadhyay 2017).

IX. 2. Malay Peninsula, Singapore

Sub-chapter IX.2 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 624 references on the geology of the Malay Peninsula and adjacent Singapore. This is a subset of a more extensive collection of papers. Classic textbooks on the Malay Peninsula are by Gobbett and Hutchison (1973) and Hutchison and Tan (eds.) (2009).

The Malay Peninsula is essentially an orogenic belt, formed during the collision of the Sibumasu and Indochina (Malacca) continental plates in Middle-Late Triassic time, which closed the Paleotethys Ocean along the Bentong-Raub suture. Exposures are mainly Triassic and older rocks, primarily granites belonging to different belts of subduction-related and post-collisional magmatism (Searle et al. 2012):

The Sibumasu terrane in the Western part of the Peninsula contains a relatively complete Paleozoic shelfal marine succession, including earliest Permian glacial diamictites, attesting to the block's position at the margin of Gondwana at that time.

IX. 3. Thailand

Sub-chapter IX.3 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 1145 references on the geology of Thailand. The geology of Thailand is complex and the amount of literature is large. A major recent review is the book by Ridd, Barber and Crow (eds.) (2011).

As in the Malay Peninsula, basement of Thailand is composed of two major continental plates, the elongate Sibumasu terrane in the West and Indochina in the East. Both terranes separated from the Gondwana supercontinent, but the Indochina terrane broke up and drifted towards low latitudes much earlier (Devonian break-up?) than the Sibumasu terrane (Early Permian break-up), and therefore has a warmer Carboniferous- Permian paleoclimate record than Sibumasu.

The collision of the two plates that amalgamated in Late Triassic time is called the Indosinian Orogeny and represents closing of the Paleotethys Ocean after long-lived subduction under the Indochina plate.

The switch from Eastward subduction of the oceanic Paleotethys plate to collision was probably around the Middle- Late Triassic boundary (~237 Ma; Wang et al. 2016), which is reflected in the change from thin distal pelagic sediments to thick Middle-Late Triassic syn-orogenic turbiditic sediments with Ladinian- Carnian Halobia.

The Paleotethys suture in Thailand and the Malay Peninsula is characterized by remnants of ocean floor, including ophiolitic rocks, pelagic sediments (radiolarian cherts), ocean floor basalts and Permian carbonate seamounts (Feng et al. 2008). Numerous studies on radiolarian cherts document ages of ocean floor sediments as ranging from Late Devonian to Middle Triassic (works by Q. Feng, Basir Jasin et al. (op. div.), Sashida et al., Spiller and Metcalfe (2005), etc.)

Like the Malay Peninsula, granites are widespread across Thailand, and have been divided into the Western (mainly Cretaceous- mid-Tertiary), Central (mainly Permian- Triassic) and Eastern provinces (mainly Late Triassic) (Cobbing et al. 1986, Charusisri et al. 1993, Hutchison, 2007).

Widespread Late Eocene- Oligocene extension created a series of mainly N-S trending intra-cratonic sedimentary basins, associated with exhumation of metamorphic core complexes (Doi Inthanon and Doi Suthep in North Thailand; e.g. Gardiner et al. 2016)

Evaporite deposits are extremely rare in SE Asia, but one of the world's largest salt deposits is in the Upper Cretaceous of the Khorat Basin of NE Thailand, where the halite dominated Maha Sarakham Formation evaporites range in thickness from 250-1100m. The basin probably was connected in the North with the Sakhon Nakhon evaporite basin, which straddles into southern Laos.

Time-equivalent eolian sandstones support a period of (subtropical?) arid desert climate around Cenomanian and/or younger Cretaceous time in NE Thailand (Hasegawa et al. 2010).

IX. 4. Myanmar (Burma), NE India, SW Yunnan (= Sibumasu - West Burma plates)

Sub-chapter IX.4 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 474 references on the geology of Myanmar and adjacent Yunnan Provine of southern China. Good recent reviews of Myanmar geology are the books by Barber, Khin Zaw and Crow (eds.) (2017) and Mitchell (2018). For petroleum geology of Myanmar see the book by Racey and Ridd (2015).

Myanmar is located West of Thailand, and the geology of East Myanmar is (Shan Plateau) is in many ways similar to the Sibumasu-terrane geology of Western Thailand in the East. West Myanmar is composed of younger terranes, in the collision zone between Sibumasu terrane and the collided India Plate.

Myanmar has one of the oldest oil-producing areas in the world, with shallow onshore oil production in young anticlinal structures in the Central Burma Depression since the 1850's. Today the main exploration activity is in the Andaman Sea offshore NW Myanmar, for deep water biogenic gas fields in young submarine fan systems of the Bengal Fan (Racey and Ridd 2015).

IX. 5. Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, SE China (= Indochina Plate)

Sub-chapter IX.5 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 310 references on the geology of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and SE China.

The countries in this chapter are all located on the Indochina Plate.

IX. 6. Malay Basin, Gulf of Thailand

Sub-chapter IX.6 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 195 references on the geology of the offshore basins in the Gulf of Thailand/ Sunda Shelf area.

This area is is located on the Indochina Plate basement. The main interest in this area is the presence of numerous oil and gas fields in Late Paleogene- Neogene intra-continental rift basins.

In the Thailand sector (both onshore and offshore) rift basins are mainly relatively narrow N-S trending half-grabens, that may preferentially have formed on the Triassic Inthanon suture zone (Paleotethys suture; Morley 2011). Basin fill is almost entirely non-marine and hydrocarbons are mainly gas.

The larger Malay (and West Natun) basin contains numerous oil and gas fields in Oligocene- Miocene sandstone reservoirs, that are sourced mainly from Eocene- Oligocene lacustrine shales. For more detailed reviews see Petronas (1999) The petroleum geology and resources of Malaysia.

IX. 7. South China Sea

Sub-chapter IX.7 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 341 references on the geology of the South China Sea area.

The South China Sea is an unusually broad Early Oligocene- Early Miocene extensional area, with oceanic seafloor spreading in its central parts from ~32-33 Ma until ~20 or 16 Ma (Briais et al. 1993, Barckhausen and Roeser 2004, Barckhausen et al. 2014, Li et al. 2015).

This rifting separated the Palawan Block (Philippines) from the South China continental margin, and the collision of this block with the North Borneo subduction zone is what ended seafloor spreading.

IX. 8. Philippines (General, Palawan, Luzon)

Sub-chapter IX.8 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 666 references on the geology of The Philippines.

The geology of The Philippines in complicated, and mostly a young amalgamation of Cenozoic volcanic arc and ophiolite terranes; flanked by active subduction zones.

Two main tectonic domains may be distinguished in The Philippines):

  1. in East the Philippine Mobile Belt, that continues North from the North Moluccas in Eastern Indonesia;
  2. in West an assembly of continental blocks (part of the Eurasian margin: Palawan Block, Borneo), volcanic arcs and remnant arcs and Cenozoic marginal ocean basins (South China Sea, Sulu Sea, Celebes Sea), located North of Sulawesi and Borneo (Dimalanta and Yumul 2015) (see also Chapter IX.9).

IX. 9. South Philippines (Celebes Sea, Sulu Sea, Sandakan)

Sub-chapter IX.9 of Bibliography 7.0 contains 92 references on the geology of South Philippines areas around the two relatively small Cenozoic oceanic marginal basins (Celebes Sea, Sulu Sea) and surrounding magmatic arcs (North Sulawesi, Sulu island arc, Sangihe island arc) . These include older arc/sliver terranes (Cagayan Ridge). Both of the marginal basins were originally larger than today, due to partial closing by subduction under adjacent volcanic arcs.

Key general papers on these basins include Silver and Rangin (1991, 1995), Rangin and Silver (1991).

As discussed in chapter IV.4- Makassar Straits, the Celebes Sea formed as a back-arc marginal basin during Middle- Late Eocene S-SE directed rollback of the North-dipping subduction zone of the Eocene ‘Great Indonesian Arc’. Most of the basin is >4 km deep, and deeper than 5 km in the North Sulawesi and Cobatoba Trenches. Volcanic seamounts, not covered by younger sediments, are common on the Celebes Sea seafloor.

Celebes Sea oceanic crust becomes systematically younger in SW direction, from Early Lutetian to Early Priabonian (= ~48-35 Ma; Gaina and Muller, 2007), suggesting either asymmetric seafloor spreading, or, more likely, that more than half of the original Celebes Sea basin floor has already been consumed by subduction at the North Sulawesi Trench. Seismic tomography and recent earthquake activity confirm a South-dipping subducted slab under North Sulawesi down to ~400km depth (>500km long), reflecting southward subduction at least since Late Miocene time.

Cenozoic sediment fill in most of the Celebes Sea is relatively thin, particularly the condensed calcareous pelagic mudstones sequence from late Middle Eocene to late Early Miocene. During Middle- Late Miocene there was an increase in quartz-rich turbidites deposition, peaking at ~10 Ma, probably triggered by collisional uplift events in East Borneo (e.g. Nichols and Hall 1999).

The Sulu Sea basin is another backarc marginal basin and is the result of splitting and SE-directed rollback of the Sulu Ridge volcanic arc, above the NW-dipping subduction zone of the Celebes Sea plate, in Early Miocene time (Silver et al. 1991, Hutchison 1992)

Deposition within the Sula Basin is mainly pelagic in late Early Miocene. There is a major increase in sedimentation rate in Middle-Late Miocene time with widespread turbidites, probably due to collisional events in North Borneo (Nichols 1990, Bertrand et al. 1991, 1996)

The Sandakan Basin at the SW side of the Sulu Sea has been target of hydrocarbon exploration and yielded mostly minor gas discoveries (Graves and Swauger 1997). The basin is essentially a Middle Miocene- Recent depocenter of deltaic and deepwater clastic deposition along the NE Sabah margin, and is probably underlain by Sulu Sea oceanic crust (e.g. Pederson 1996, Oke et al. 2014, Jong and Futulan 2015, Murray 2015).

IX.10. SW Pacific (incl. New Caledonia, Solomon Islands)

This chapter of the bibliography contains 567 papers on the SW Pacific region, which, West of the main Pacific Ocean plate, is a complex collage of marginal oceanic basins, separated by active and inactive oceanic subduction zones/ volcanic arcs. It is dotted with numerous volcanic seamounts, the largest of which is the Cretaceous Ontong Java Plateau.

One remarkable feature along the entire West Pacific is the common presence of marginal basins, at both the East Asia and East Australia margins, which formed by extension/ seafloor spreading above a retreating subduction zone. Most authors view this as driven by slab rollback of Pacific Ocean west-dipping subduction system(s).

This chapter includes many papers on New Caledonia, which is a microcontinent that rifted off the NE margin of Australia in Cretaceous time and collided with an intra-oceanic arc system in Eocene time, making it one of the classic, well-studied examples of ‘ophiolite obduction’.

It also includes some regional papers from the New Zealand area and the ‘Zealandia’ region of deepwater submerged continental rises (Lord Howe Rise, Fairway Ridge, Norfolk Ridge) between New Caledonia and New Zealand, that all were once part of the long-lived Paleozoic- Triassic accretionary margin of East Australia/ NE Gondwana.

IX.14. NE Indian Ocean

This chapter of the bibliography contains 50 references on the NW Indian region, which borders Indonesia South and SW of Java and Sumatra. It is an entirely oceanic domain, with ages of oceanic crust varying from latest Jurassic (~ 150 Ma) south of Java to Middle Eocene (~43 Ma) off west Sumatra.

A major feature of this part of the Indian Ocean crust is the Wharton Ridge, an extinct spreading center that was active from Late Jurassic to ~43 Ma (e.g. Heine et al. 2004). Most of this ridge has been subducting under Java- Sumatra since ~70 Ma (Whittaker et al. 2007), but remnants remain as a bathymetric ridge off NW Sumatra today.

The Indian Ocean Plate is currently subducting under Java and Sumatra along the 3200km long Sunda-Java trench. The oceanic plate has already completely been consumed East of Sumba, in the Banda Arc- NW Australian continental margin collision zone.

The differences in ages of subducting Indian Ocean crust and position of major transform faults may help explain some of the observed variations in subduction rates, arc volcanism, dip of subducting plate and lateral changes in depths of earthquake activity.

The effect of subduction of the Wharton Ridge under Sumatra between 15-0 Ma was discussed by Whittaker et al. (2007).

Numerous volcanic seamounts have been identified on NE Indian Ocean floor (Taneja and O'Neill 2014), One of the larger seamounts formed an island, Christmas Island ~350km south of westernmost Java. The Roo Rise Plateau South of East Java is a large, submarine volcanic seamount complex with an area of ~100,000 km2, crustal thickness 12-18km, and it rises ~2.0-2.5 km above the surrounding Indian Ocean floor

The Roo Rise, is now colliding with the subduction trench South of Java. It is probably resisting subduction, as evidenced by the indentation of ~50 km of the trench/ accretionary prism deformation front. It is associated with extensive slumping of slope sediments near the collision zone and is causing uplift of the entire forearc region (Masson et al. 1990, Kopp et al. 2006, Shulgin et al. 2011).

Many of the papers in this Indian Ocean chapter deal with oceanographic and paleoclimate changes in young ocean floor sediments.

IX.15. NW Australian margin

This chapter of the bibliography contains 733 references on the NW Australian continental margin, which is a rifted, passive continental margin, created by a Middle-Late Jurassic rift-breakup event.

The geology spans a very wide range of ages from Proterozoic to Recent, mostly in intra-continental rift and (since Late Jurassic) passive margin extensional settings. Its unusually thick sediment cover that exceed 20km. This geologic province continues into the Indonesian region in the Arafura Sea and West Papua (South of the Central Range).

An important aspect of the NW Australia margin is its relatively thin Precambrian crust (<20km) and unusually thick sediment cover (up to >20km). This appears to be the result of unusually widespread early extensional event in Late Carboniferous- Early Permian time, that included excessive lower crustal ductile thinning (Etheridge 1992, O'Brien 1993, AGS) 1994).

The Australia NW Shelf area is a significant oil and gas province. Most of the oil and gas occurrences are in Jurassic and Triassic clastic reservoirs in rotated fault blocks below the Lower Cretaceous regional seal. The area is mostly a gas province, which for a long time was not a commercially viable commodity, but is now home to several LNG export projects.

The NW Australian oil-gas province continues eastward into the Joint Development zone South of Timor Leste (with Bayu Undan and Sunrise-Troubadour gas fields) and further East into Indonesian waters, where the Abadi gas field was discovered.

IX.16. NE Australian margin (‘Tasmanides’)

This chapter contains 289 references on the geology of the NE and East margin of Australia. This has been part of the polyphase, accretionary orogenic margin of Eastern Gondwana in Paleozoic- Triassic time, and its geology is very different from the NW Australia margin with its long history of intra-cratonic and and passive margin rifting.

The reason for including this in the Indonesia bibliography is because this accretionary belt continues under Papua New Guinea South of the main foldbelt, and also in Eastern Indonesia, where the Birds Head of West Papua and the Banggai-Sula islands show basement with characteristics of this Paleozoic- Triassic active margin. These probably represent microcontinental plates that were dispersed from somewhere along this NE margin in Cretaceous- Early Paleogene time (Pigram and Panggabean 1984, Struckmeyer et al. 1993, etc.).

The wide system of accretionary terranes is collectively referred to as the ‘Tasmanides’ (eg. Glen 2005). They form a complicated system of successive foldbelts with multiple accretionary systems with ophiolites, volcanic arc terranes, etc.

The easternmost, youngest part of Tasmanides system is the New England Orogen, which formed as a result of long-lived Late Devonian- Triassic west-dipping subduction of the Panthalassan Ocean (Paleo-Pacific) (e.g. Korsch 2004).

This ‘Tasmanide’ orogenic belt extends northward as basement of autochthonous Papua New Guinea. and is also remarkably similar to basement characteristics of detached terranes now in northern PNG (Kubor, etc.) and in Eastern Indonesia (Birds Head of West Papua, Banggai-Sula, etc.; e.g. Pigram and Panggabean 1984, Struckmeyer et al. 1993, Amiruddin 2009). Radiometric ages and detrital zircons from these terranes cluster around 240 Ma (Ladinian) (Decker et al. 2017, etc.)

Permo- Triassic granitic plutons along the East Australian margin and in dispersed terranes of northern New Guinea (PNG, Birds Head) and Banggai-Sula, marking remnants of mainly Late Permian- Middle Triassic magmatic arc/ subduction along the active East Gondwanan margin (Amiruddin 2009).

Permo- Triassic granitic plutons along the East Australian margin and in dispersed terranes of northern New Guinea (PNG, Birds Head) and Banggai-Sula, marking remnants of mainly Late Permian- Middle Triassic magmatic arc/ subduction along the active East Gondwanan margin (Amiruddin 2009).

The eastern part of the Tasmanides collapsed in Late Cretaceous- E Paleogene time, leading to opening of the Tasman Sea and Coral Sea marginal oceanic basins. This caused the separation of large sections of the former accretionary margin from the East Australian margin, which are now the the vast area of the mostly submerged 'Zealandia' terranes (Lord Howe Rise, Fairway Ridge, Norfolk Ridge, Torlesse Terrane, etc.) and NE to New Caledonia (see also SW Pacific chapter).

Expressions of this Late Cretaceous- Early Paleogene rift event can be expected in the terranes that rifted off this part of the NE Australian margin and ended up in northern New Guinea and Eastern Indonesia (although probably not in the same non-marine facies as East Queensland). One likely candidate in the Indonesian region is in the eastern Birds Head- Bintuni Basin, where there is a well-documented thickening and deepening facies of the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian-) earliest Eocene interval. This sand-bearing section is usually called Waripi Formation, is up to ~3000’ thick (thickest in NNW, and thought to be sourced from there), mainly composed of deep marine clastics and contains gas reservoirs in Paleocene turbidite sandstones in the Wiriagar Deep gas field (e.g. Mardani and Butterworth 2016).