Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Research Article

Morphology of the Niger Delta: Local Facies Belts Orientation versus Depobelts and Growth Fault Orientations

Durogbitan A Abimbola^*

Petrfac IES, Research and Development, Manchester, UK

*Corresponding Author:

Durogbitan A Abimbola
Principal Geoscientist, Petrfac IES
Research and Development, Manchester, UK
Tel: +447545822428
E-mail: adewoledurogbitan@yahoo.co.uk

Received date: April 08, 2016; Accepted date: May 13, 2016; Published date: May 26, 2016

Citation: Durogbitan AA (2016) Morphology of the Niger Delta: Local Facies Belts Orientation versus Depobelts and Growth Fault Orientations. J Marine Sci Res Dev 6:190. doi:10.4172/2155-9910.1000190

Copyright: © 2016 Durogbitan AA. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This work presents for the first time, evidence and the relationship between the ancient coastal belt and the modern coastal belt in terms of local facies belts orientation versus depobelt and fault orientations within the Niger Delta. This observation suggests that the ancient coastal belt of the delta is more lobate /arcuate than the modern Niger delta. The delta became broadly convex to the sea during the late Miocene. Deltas are influenced by a variety of fluvial and marine processes and these processes controlled their morphology. The most widely used classification scheme today is that of Galloway who subdivided delta according to their dominant processes i.e. rivers, waves and tide. Fluvially dominated deltas tend to display lobate-elongate morphology, e.g. the Balize delta- Mississippi. In contrast wave-dominated deltas tend to be more lobate and have smooth, arcuate to cuspate margins, e.g. the Nile delta. Tide dominated deltas tended to be estuarine to irregular in geometry. Although the Niger delta has been characterized to be mixed influenced delta showing the combination of the effects of river, wave and tidal processes, the modern Niger delta has been described to be more wave dominated and more lobate, and the classification falls within the wave dominated section on Galloway classifications. This implies that during Miocene, the delta was more fluvially dominated in relation to sediment supply and basinal processes (wave and tide). This also implies that the modern Niger delta cannot be used as a direct analogue for the ancient delta.

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