This PhD research focuses on forecasting the geological landscape evolution of Northern Africa, aiming to understand how geomorphic changes will impact natural resources, particularly water availability. The study integrates numerical modeling, using Badlands/Gospl at a continental scale and Landlab for targeted study areas that meet specific criteria, such as active aquifers, human population influence, and different tectonic settings.
Supervision Team
Rémi Charton (daily supervisor)
Kieran Dunne (daily supervisor)
Joep Storms (promotor)
This PhD project is a multiscale and multidisciplinary tectono-stratigraphic evolution study. It focuses on the northern margin of the Saharan platform during the Early Mesozoic (Triassic and Early Jurassic), in and at the immediate vicinity of the Present-day borders of Tunisia. The research aims at better understanding lithospheric vertical movements (burial and exhumation/subsidence and uplift) that influenced basin morphology, sedimentary facies distribution, and structural deformations.
Supervision Team
Pierre-Olivier Bruna (daily supervisor)
Rémi Charton (daily supervisor)
Giovanni Bertotti (promotor)
My research vision as an Assistant Professor of the TUDelft.
in progress
This Special Issue demonstrates the use of a host of multidisciplinary techniques to evaluate basin architecture and evolution, to characterize the hinterland and assess implications for source-to-sink studies. Using case studies from the Atlantic and Atlasic domains, we address: i) the complexity of basin evolution across North Africa and the Central Atlantic, ii) the complex relationship between basin tectonics, iii) vertical movements, and iv) provenance and the deposits delivered to the sink.
The Special Issue is organized into three research themes: 1) Syn- and post-rift Central Atlantic basins along the passive margin and their hinterlands, 2) Atlasic basins and their hinterlands, and 3) North Africa / Central Atlantic Mesozoic Stratigraphy and Biostratigraphy. We dedicate this Special Issue to Dr. Luc Bulot, a friend, mentor and very valued member of the North Africa Research Group, who sadly passed away in July 2022 at the age of only 59. Luc was a world-renowned paleontologist and biostratigrapher (specializing in Cretaceous ammonoids), who had been a driving force for much of our research for over 8 years. The revised high-resolution stratigraphy framework that he built in Essaouira-Agadir Basin for the Jurassic to Cretaceous of Morocco/Central Atlantic underpinned a lot of our work. He leaves behind a huge body of research and his passion and enthusiasm for geology will never be forgotten.
Link to issue: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-african-earth-sciences/special-issue/105JP6MWT66
Guest editors
Rémi Charton (executive guest editor)
Pierre-Olivier Bruna
Jonathan Redfern
Mohamed Nahim
Mohamed Soussi
Emmanuel Roquette, Aude Duval-Arnould, Orrin Bryers, Stefan Schröder, Tim Luber, Ian Millar, Rémi Charton, Luc Bulot, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, in press 2024 (b)
Angel Arantegui, Rhodri Jerrett, James Lovell-Kennedy, Luc Bulot, Rémi Charton, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, October 2024 (a)
Orrin Bryers, Luc Georges Bulot, Jason Jeremiah, Daniela Reháková, Mohssine Ettachfini, Moussa Masrour, Max Casson, Camille Frau, Antoine Pictet, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, August 2024
(Editor: Rémi Charton)
An integrated stratigraphic re-evaluation of key Central Atlantic DSDP sites
Max Casson, Jason Jeremiah, Gérôme Calvès, Frédéric de Ville de Goyet, Luc Bulot, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024
(Editor: Rémi Charton)
Emmanuel Roquette, James Lovell-Kennedy, Leonardo Muniz Pichel, Stefan Schröder, Rémi Charton, Ian Millar, Camille Frau, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024 (a)
Mona Bouin, Mohamed Soussi, Moncef Saidi, Sami Riahi, Kamel Boukhalfa, Essam Ismail, Zied Day, & Emmanuel Robert
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024
(Editor: Rémi Charton)
Architecture of Oxfordian coral buildups along the Atlantic margin of Morocco
Aude Duval-Arnould, Luc Bulot, Luis Pomar, Rémi Charton, Jonathan Redfern, & Stefan Schröder
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024 (b)
Open Access
Nawwar Al-Sinawi, Cathy Hollis, Aude Duval-Arnould, Ardiansyah Koeshidayatullah, Stefan Schröder, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Special Issue: A tribute to Luc Bulot, March 2024
Open Access
Cretaceous climate change evidenced in the Senegalese rock record, NW Africa
Monty Pearson, Max Casson, Ian Millar, Rémi Charton, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, March 2023
Aude Duval-Arnould, Luc Bulot, Moussa Masrour, Mike Simmons, Alain Bonnot, Rémi Charton, Jonathan Redfern, & Stefan Schröder
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, February 2024 (a)
Open Access
Camille Frau, Orrin Bryers, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Special Issue: A tribute to Luc Bulot, January 2024
(Editor: Rémi Charton)
Jianpeng Wang, Jonathan Redfern, Luc G. Bulot, & Kevin G. Taylor
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Special Issue: A tribute to Luc Bulot, November 2023
(Editor: Rémi Charton)
Open Access
James Lovell-Kennedy, Emmanuel Roquette, Jonathan Redfern, Stefan Schröder, & Rémi Charton
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Special Issue: A tribute to Luc Bulot, April 2023
Open Access
+3 manuscripts in revision
The current accepted tectonic model for the area favors the hypothesis of a long-lasting rifting phase occurring between the Permian and the Jurassic. This model fits well with the general plate tectonic reconstruction relating this rifting phase with the opening of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. However, in Tunisia, the sedimentary record of the Permian is strongly affected by a series of unconformities related with a “late” Hercynian Orogeny event. These erosional events make the Permian record very partial and geodynamic reconstruction difficult to establish with certainties.
A reinvestigation of a subsurface dataset, combined with surface data collected in outcrops, attested the absence of rifting-like deformation in the Permian and in the Triassic sediments at the considered mega-regional scale. Instead, the Permian and the Triassic seems to have behaved more like sag basins, locally affected by successive shortening events generating large-scale subtle undulations persisting until the end of the Jurassic.
Architecture and evolution of the Southern Chotts-Jeffara basin,Tunisia.
Pierre-Olivier Bruna, Giovanni Bertotti, Rémi Charton, Richard Dixon, & Ahmed Nasri
in Tectonics, Volume 42 of December 2023
Open Access
James Lovell-Kennedy, Emmanuel Roquette, Jonathan Redfern, Stefan Schröder, & Rémi Charton
in Journal of African Earth Sciences, Special Issue: A tribute to Luc Bulot, April 2023
Open Access
+2 manuscripts in preparation
Low-Temperature Thermochronology (LTT) potentially allows for the investigation of the cooling history of the upper part of Earth’s crust. In the Central Atlantic margins, the vast majority of LTT data was obtained in the domain adjacent to the rifted margins and a large portion of the ages correspond to the early post-rift phase.
To explain this, some authors have argued that the rift thermal signature outreached its rift zone, and affected the geothermal gradient of the unstreched continental crust, resulting in a reset of the LTT ages rapidly followed by cooling after continental break-up. Others have submitted tectono-climatic processes such as: i) far-field stresses, ii) enhanced erosion by climatic/landmass position change(s), and/or iii) dynamic topography.
To test the above-mentioned hypotheses, we compiled over 6000 LTT ages from the rim of the Central Atlantic Ocean. We discuss LTT spatial and temporal patterns in regards to the pre-, syn- (Triassic to Early Triassic), and post-rift phases. Further, we run a tailored geodynamic model in order to monitor the evolution of the Partial Annealing Zone through time in the unstretched continental crust.
[Pre-print] Phanerozoic cooling events in the rims of the Central Atlantic Ocean
Rémi Charton and Rémi Leprêtre
+ 2 manuscripts in preparation
The first step in this project was to re-assess the geology in the region in both the onshore and offshore domains. Several PhD students of the NARG were working on this, namely Max Casson, Monty Pearson, and Selin Coskun.
Emmanuel Roquette, Aude Duval-Arnould, Orrin Bryers, Stefan Schröder, Tim Luber, Ian Millar, Rémi Charton, Luc Bulot, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, in press 2024 (b)
Emmanuel Roquette, James Lovell-Kennedy, Leonardo Muniz Pichel, Stefan Schröder, Rémi Charton, Ian Millar, Camille Frau, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024 (a)
An integrated stratigraphic re-evaluation of key Central Atlantic DSDP sites
Max Casson, Jason Jeremiah, Gérôme Calvès, Frédéric de Ville de Goyet, Luc Bulot, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024 (in press)
Cretaceous climate change evidenced in the Senegalese rock record, NW Africa
Monty Pearson, Max Casson, Ian Millar, Rémi Charton, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, December 2023
Max Casson, Gérôme Calvès, Maads Huuse, Ben Sayers, & Jonathan Redfern
in Basin Research, Volume 33 of February 2021
Open access
Max Casson, Luc G. Bulot, Jason Jeremiah, & Jonathan Redfern
in Gondwana Research, Volume 81 of May 2020
+ 2 manuscripts in preparation
Low-temperature thermochronology studies revealed major exhumation events affecting domains in the hinterland of the Central Atlantic margins, where Palaeozoic and/or Precambrian basement is exposed. Thus, domains traditionally assumed to be stable since at least the Variscan and juxtaposed to subsiding Meso-Cenozoic basins, appear to be affected by km-scale vertical movements during the Atlantic rifting and after the Early Jurassic breakup in the Central Atlantic. In this project, we investigate the extent and the magnitude of these motions along the NW African margin (Morocco-Mauritania-Senegal).
Mohamed Gouiza, Giovanni Bertotti, Rémi Charton, K. Haimoudane, I. Dunklan, & A. Anczkiewicz
in Journal of Geophysical Research Solid Earth, Volume 124 of November 2019
Mesozoic and Cenozoic thermal history of the Western Reguibat Shield (West African Craton).
Mohamed Gouiza, Giovanni Bertotti, & Paul AM Andriessen.
in Terra Nova, volume 30 of December 2018
Open access
+1 manuscript in preparation
Paleo-altimetry, stratigraphy, and sediment budgets may be evaluated with numerical models commonly refered to as ‘Landscape Evolution Models’ (LEMs). Source-to-sink studies have limitations: the spatial and temporal resolution of each component for instance or the quality of the sedimentary record. This renders the examination of past source-to-sink systems a challenging task, however the range of possible outcomes can be partially addressed by building multiple models using process-based modelling tools such as LEMs. In NW Africa, the distribution of eroded sediments in the rifted margin is controlled by the drainage systems connected to the hinterland. However, most of paleo-river systems were not fossilised or are not exposed, resulting in a lack of data for their size, sediment flux, and entry-point position. In order to better understand Moroccan Mesozoic source-to-sink systems, we use the LEM ‘pyBADLANDS’ code (Salles et al., 2018). We input the timing, location and amplitude of exhumation events, as documented by low-temperature thermochronology data.
+ 2 manuscripts in preparation
The ‘NARG GIS Database’, is a long term geoscientific project conducted by the North Africa Research Group (NARG; http://www.narg.org.uk/). It aims at gathering geological features and knowledge generated by former, current, and future NARG members and displaying them on a ‘map’. The NARG GIS Database extends from 30°W to 50°E, and from 0°N to 40°N. It currently contains over 50 layers pertaining to geological research and petroleum exploration. It is designed and kept up-to-date by and for NARG members.
2 manuscripts in preparation
The North Africa Research Group (NARG) Morocco team works on multiple integrated regional studies focussed on the eastern Central Atlantic Margin. The studies form the base for a large Source-to-Sink investigation. The project is made possible by the outstanding outcrop quality and by the onshore/offshore well and seismic data supplied by local stakeholders.
PhD students of NARG working on this project were: Rémi Charton (hinterlands, S2S), Angel Arantegui (Sedimentology, Cretaceous), Tim L. Luber (Sedimentology, Cretaceous), Aude Duval-Arnould (Sedimentology, Jurassic), Leonardo M. Pichel (Seismic interpretation, Salt tectonics), Emmanuel Roquette (Provenance, Mesozoic), Nawwar El Sinawi (Diagenesis, Jurassic), and Orrin Bryers (Sedimentology, Cretaceous).
Methods: Geology, Low-Temperature Thermochronology, Ichnology, Foraminifera, Carbonates, Ammonoidea, Sequence Stratigraphy, Biostratigraphy, Geochronology, Carbon Isotopes, TOC, Provenance, Stratigraphy, Seismic Interpretation, Salt Tectonics, Calcareous Nannofossils
Work published:
Angel Arantegui, Rhodri Jerrett, James Lovell-Kennedy, Luc Bulot, Rémi Charton, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences (JAES), Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, October 2024
Open Access
Architecture of Oxfordian coral buildups along the Atlantic margin of Morocco
Aude Duval-Arnould, Luc Bulot, Luis Pomar, Rémi Charton, Jonathan Redfern, & Stefan Schröder
in Journal of African Earth Sciences, Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, May 2024
Open Access
Aude Duval-Arnould, Luc Bulot, Moussa Masrour, Mike Simmons, Alain Bonnot, Rémi Charton, Jonathan Redfern, & Stefan Schröder
in Journal of African Earth Sciences, Virtual Special Issue: A Tribute to Luc Bulot, December 2023
Open Access
Rémi Charton, Christian Kluge, David Fernández-Blanco, Aude Duval-Arnould, Orrin Bryers, Jonathan Redfern , & Giovanni Bertotti
in Journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology, Volume 128 of June 2021 (see the Pre-print version)
Open Access
Aude Duval Arnould, Stefan Schröder, Rémi Charton, Rémi Joussiaume, Philippe Razin, & Jonathan Redfern
in Journal of African Earth Sciences, Volume 178 of June 2021
Anticline growth by shortening during crustal exhumation of the Moroccan Atlantic margin
David Fernández-Blanco, Mohamed Gouiza, Rémi Charton, Christian Kluge, J. Klaver, K. Brautigam, & Giovanni Bertotti
in Journal of Structural Geology, Volume 140 of November 2020 (see the Pre-print version)
Open Access
Leonardo M. Pichel, Mads Huuse, Jonathan Redfern, & Emma Finch
in Journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology, Volume 103 of May 2019
Angel Arantegui, Rodhri Jerrett, Stefan Schröder, Luc G. Bulot, Roberto Gatto, Stefano Monari, & Jonatahn Redfern
in Sedimentary Geology, Volume 386 of May 2019
A revised ammonoid biostratigraphy for the Aptian of NW Africa: Essaouira-Agadir Basin, Morocco.
Tim L. Luber, Luc G. Bulot,Jonathan Redfern, Camille Frau, Angel Arantegui, & Moussa Masrour
in Cretaceous Research, Volume 79 of November 2017
The project, supervised by Prof. G. Bertotti, Prof. J. Redfern, and Dr. J. Storms, focused on the exhumation, erosion and sedimentation system, which developed during Jurassic to Cretaceous times in the passive continental margin of North West Africa. A large portion of Morocco experienced km-scale exhumation producing sediments that were transported by fluvial systems to the west and deposited onshore and offshore.
Our aim was to constrain the exhumation, erosion, distributary and depositional (onshore and offshore) patterns. Analysis of transitional successions outcropping in Morocco and of deep-water deposits seismically imaged offshore provided a reconstruction of the depositional system.
This project was funded by ISES (The Netherlands Research Centre for Integrated Solid Earth Science) and supported by the NARG (North Africa Research Group) as part of the Early Cretaceous Morocco Project.
Rémi Charton, Giovanni Bertotti, Aude Duval Arnould, Joep E.A. Storms, & Jonathan Redfern
in Basin Research, Volume 33 of April 2021 (see the Pre-print version)
Open Access
Rémi Charton, Giovanni Bertotti, Angel Arantegui, & Luc Bulot
in Journal of African Earth Sciences, Volume 141 of April 2018
see the open access Post-print version
Mohamed Gouiza, Rémi Charton, Giovanni Bertotti, Paul Andriessen, & Joep Storms
in International Journal of Earth Sciences, Volume 106 of March 2017
Open Access
The project was supervised by Dr. P.Y. Collin of the UMR 6282 at the University of Burgundy (Dijon) and funded by the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM).
For the BRGM, the Paris Basin (France) is a potential location for deep geological storage of CO2. The “Oolithe Blanche” Formation (Bathonian, Middle Jurassic) and its lateral equivalent formations are currently studied for this purpose. The site suitability as a storage zone depends on its petrophysical properties (porosity/permeability), which are influenced by compaction and cementation.
Several sets of fluids (meteoric, marine or mixed) have circulated within these mainly oolitic formations at different times during their diagenetic history. To constrain the composition and the origin of these fluids, analyses of cement phases were conducted across the Paris Basin. From the northwestern Bathonian fringe in Normandy down to Poitou and Centre, nine sedimentological sections were selected in order to provide the base of this work. Forty thin sections were made out of these outcrops and analysed by microscopy, staining and cathodoluminescence.
Bathonian sediments have undergone the three diagenetic stages: eogenesis, mesogenesis and telogenesis. Parent fluids of mesogenetic cements are widely compared on the eastern side of the basin (geochemistry, ferrous content, luminescence) but not on the opposite side. This work shows that mesogenetic phases are clearly different across the Paris Basin. However, parent fluids origins, ages and paths were not well constrained.
Sophie Violette, Pierre-Yves Collin, Vincent Lagneau, Fabien Aubertin, Yasin Makhloufi, Rémi Charton, & Françoise Bergerat
in Comptes Rendus Geoscience, Volume 348 of September-October 2016
Open Access
Yasin Makhloufi, Pierre-Yves Collin, Françoise Bergerat, Lisa Casteleyn, Steven Claes, Christian David, Beatriz Menendez, Fabrice Monna, Philippe Robion, Jean-Pierre Sizun, Rudy Swennen, & Christophe Rigollet
in Marine and Petroleum Geology, Volume 48 of December 2013