This chapter starts with the introduction of heat conduction and its controlling parameters. It then describes the control of thermal regimes of transform margins and strike-slip terrains by a number of material parameters such as specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and radioactive heat production rate, which, together with their controlling factors, are described individually.

This chapter goes through a list of potential thermal regimes occurring prior to the development of the strike-slip setting or transform margin. These have a strong impact on the thermal regime among all controlling factors. This is due to the fact that the thermal regime affects the host continental lithosphere in many different aspects, such as its thickness, metamorphic reactions, melt formation, rheological zonation, and mechanical behavior. Following a brief summary of basic concepts of heat transport and generation, and heat flow presently observed at the Earth’s surface, the chapter discusses thermal regimes and temperature distribution with depth that can exist in continental lithosphere affected by transform margin formation. It sets the stage for the subsequent evolution, which is strongly dependent on the initial subsurface temperature field. Although this influence progressively diminishes as the transform margin evolves, the knowledge of pre-existing thermal regimes may also help to understand spatial variations along a specific transform margin segment and present-day differences between transform margins.

This chapter describes the effect of erosion and deposition on the thermal regimes of strike-slip and pull-apart terrains, and transform margins. It defines the significant deposition rate, which is faster than 0.1 mmyr–1, as exerting a noticeable cooling effect on the surface heat flow while a significant erosional rate has the opposite effect, resulting in advection of hotter material toward the surface. It support this discussion with examples from the East Slovakian and Vienna pull-apart basins in the Western Carpathians, Wasatch normal fault example from Utah, and offshore North Gabon and East Indian examples.

The chapter defines the top seal as a transient feature on the geological timescale. It divides seals into lithological and fault seals. The chapter goes through the physical apparatus controlling the behavior of various types of seals, all the main mechanisms involved together with their controlling factors, and finishes with an attempt to use case strike-slip and transform regions for describing the seals of these settings in a systematic way, trying to tie their variability to variations in the structural architecture of their respective settings.

This chapter discusses fluid flow mechanisms at strike-slip fault-related and transform margin-related settings. It focuses on the identification of specific fluid flow systems, and, subsequently, the determination of their role in the local fluid regime, as well as their migration pathways, time span of their activity, fluid sources, and their controlling factors. The discussion draws from the current literature on case studies, as well as numerical and analog models.

This chapter focuses on how the thermal evolution of transform margins is controlled by deformation related to ridge migration parallel to the margin, creating pronounced thermal perturbation. It draws from insights provided from the three-dimensional thermal finite element models using a kinematic boundary condition to account for sea-floor spreading center migration. The models are used to quantitatively investigate the complex spatial patterns and temporal changes in the thermal regime of the ocean–continent transform development stage and subsequent transform margin. The models demonstrate the consequences for the uplift history, structural style and crustal structure of a transform margin as lithospheric strength is strongly temperature dependent.

The chapter describes the development history and controlling dynamics of strike-slip faulting in various geologic settings, and its transition to continental breakup and the early drifting stage.

This chapter discusses the importance of fluid flow mechanisms described in Chapter 8 in controlling the local thermal regime of the strike-slip terrains and transform margins (i.e., determining the proportion of heat convection to heat conduction). It continues with an argument about how important it is to resolve the distribution of the primary fluid reservoirs in the system, fluid sources and sinks, fluid migration pathways, and the associated migration rates for the construction of a local quantitative thermal model or at least the appropriate use of a known analog in the qualitative way. This chapter places the fluid flow mechanisms described in Chapter 8 in the context of different tectonic settings and discusses how convective heat transfer controls their thermal regimes. It starts with discussion of oceanic and continental transforms, then pull-apart terrains, and ends with known active geothermal fields located in strike-slip settings and their characteristics.

This chapter starts with characteristics of matrix- and fracture-controlled reservoirs. Building upon Chapter 7, it focuses on a detailed discussion of depositional environments of strike-slip terrains and transform margins in an attempt to understand their potential for developing reservoirs capable of hosting hydrocarbons. The discussion includes details from several natural laboratories, such as the Vienna Basin in Austria, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, representing the continental strike-slip settings and Equatorial Atlantic and Guyana–Suriname regions representing transform margins. The knowledge from these examples is combined with other case studies from the literature on these two tectonic settings. Although every margin and basin is unique, this chapter tries to explore the commonality within continental strike-slip and transform margin settings. This chapter focuses on their main depositional trends and their role in developing specific characteristic types of reservoirs to form a framework that can be applied to other continental strike-slip terrains and transform margins.

This chapter focuses on the delineation of boundaries between different types of crust at transform margins. It describes various methods that allow one to make distribution maps of crustal types, and to associate specific structural architecture with underlying continental, proto-oceanic, and oceanic crusts. Further discussed are strengths and weaknesses of various constraining data and how much detail is provided by different methods.

The aim of this chapter is the classification of the various types of strike-slip faults and their structural architecture. In order to understand structural styles of transform margins, continental strike-slip fault zones, and pull-apart basins, transform margin precursors represented by continental transforms and continent–ocean transforms are discussed, together with their tectonic development histories, controlling dynamics, and resultant structural architecture. The discussion also includes ridge transform faults and associated oceanic fracture zones. Focus is also given to the structural architecture of the oceanic side of the continental–oceanic transform fault zone, its development history, its controlling dynamics, and the way they affect the evolution of the adjacent continental side, which subsequently evolves into the future transform margin.

This chapter describes how structural and stratigraphic architectures involving reservoirs combined with seals represent hydrocarbon traps and control their structural, stratigraphic, or combined character in strike-slip and transform margin settings. It talks about their characteristics. Structural traps evolve with their controlling strike-slip faults that develop as not steady-state features in the continental lithosphere. The trap geometry develops in response to controlling mechanical stratigraphy and local stress field undergoing constant changes. Different structural traps in the same mature strike-slip fault zone may have been developed in different stages of its development. Older ones may have been modified during the younger stages of the strike-slip fault or subsequent event. Some structural traps can be associated with the strike-slip fault itself, others with its horse-tail structures, some with the region between the two interacting strike-slip faults, others with the tectonic setting hosting the strike-slip fault, modified by the interaction of the hosting setting with developing strike-slip fault. The environment where the strike-slip fault develops may have its own suite of pre-existing traps that get modified by the strike-slip-related deformation.