A GIS‐Based Approach to Explore the Possibility of N–S Gondwana Rift in the South‐Eastern Part of India

During Early Permian to Middle Triassic, the Gondwana assembly of plates rifted several times into many intracratonic rift basins, some of which occur in the central and eastern parts of India. The present study is a GIS-based approach to explore the possibility of the existence of an N–S-oriented Early Permian-Middle Jurassic rift aligned along the south-eastern margin of the Indian Plate extending from the Cauvery Basin in the south, up to the southern part of the KG Basin in the north. Multisource data derived from analysis of data-sets corresponding to different verticals of geology and geophysics have been integrated and analytical methods implemented to derive evidence of the premised rift and prepare a geological model. Furthermore, a GIS-based tectonic reconstruction with Eastern Antarctica has been used to validate the rift model. The sediments of the premised rift may act as an additional target for hydrocarbon exploration in these basins, thus redefining its domains in both time and space.