Tectonic subsidence
Sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tectonic subsidence is the sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale, relative to crustal-scale features or the geoid.[1] The movement of crustal plates and accommodation spaces produced by faulting[2] brought about subsidence on a large scale in a variety of environments, including passive margins, aulacogens, fore-arc basins, foreland basins, intercontinental basins and pull-apart basins. Three mechanisms are common in the tectonic environments in which subsidence occurs: extension, cooling and loading.[3][4]