Gravity anomaly, subsidence history and crustal structure of passive continental margins: The conjugate margins of the East Coast, USA and Western Sahara.

Passive margins mark the transition between oceanic and continental crust. They are the product of both vertical and horizontal movements of the crust and mantle, the sites of some of the largest accumulations of sediments on the Earth's surface and, the focus of intense exploration activity by the deep-water hydrocarbons industry. The overall aim of the project will be to use flexural backstripping, crustal restoration and gravity modeling techniques to determine the structure of the conjugate continental margin offshore East Coast, USA and Western Sahara. The project will entail background reading on topics related to continental margin structure and evolution, the analysis of seismic reflection profile data using flexural "backstripping" techniques and, 2-D gravity and geoid modelling.