This publication helps scientists quickly sort through the entire spectrum of knowledge of salt tectonics, isolate relevant information, and find pathways to more-detailed information.

We classify salt-related faults and fault welds in the northern Gulf of Mexico on the basis of the three-dimensional geometry of the faults, welds, deformed strata, and associated salt bodies.

Upheaval Dome remains one of the most enigmatic structures in North America. Ongoing debate continues about whether the structure is a deeply eroded meteor-impact structure or a pinched-off salt dome.

This report subjectively reviews the chief conceptual breakthroughs in understanding salt tectonics. Each discovery and its implications are presented as simply as possible.

Initiation of diapirs is one of the least understood aspects of salt tectonics. Sedimentary differential loading and erosion are both effective, but not universal, causes of diapir initiation.

An active diapir forcefully intrudes its overburden, driven by diapir pressure that overcomes the resistance of the overburden strength. Possible causes of the driving pressure are differential loading of the source layer and a density contrast with the overburden.

Grabens overlying diapirs have previously been ascribed to intrusion, withdrawal, or dissolution of salt. We propose, however, that many grabens or half grabens above diapirs form by regional thin-skinned extension of a brittle overburden.

In response to a need for a concise presentation of new terms and concepts in salt tectonics, we have compiled a glossary that focuses on ideas developed during the 1980's.

Mushroom-shaped diapirs have an overhanging bulb fringed by one or more skirts (peripheral pendant lobes), which can curl inward to form vortices capable of entraining cover rocks to various degrees.