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.

Salt structures can be extremely challenging to interpret and understand. To begin with, the high velocity contrast between salt and most sedimentary rocks means that many salt structures are poorly imaged on seismic data.

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.

The geometry of Permian bedded salt in the Midland Basin is a product of the interaction between depositional facies and postdepositional modification by salt dissolution.

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

Data from conventional two- and three-dimensional seismic surveys and wells were used to analyze the morphology of salt structures and to determine the history of salt emplacement in a 1,500-mi2 (3,885-km2) region of the continental slope, northeast Green Canyon Area.

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.