Surface interpolation within a continental flood basalt province: An example from the Palaeogene Faroe Islands Basalt Group

The Faroe Islands Basalt Group (FIBG) is a continental flood basalt province with four proven lithohorizons that have abundant spot height data. The spline interpolation method was used to construct spatial surfaces for the lithohorizons. The resultant surfaces conform to dip and strike estimates that were previously modelled by hand and confirm the methods reliability. The surfaces should be used as guides only, but can be quickly and easily updated as new information becomes available. The surfaces have been used for a variety of different tasks, for example, obtaining gross thickness estimates, producing isopach maps and constructing geological cross-sections. An additional benefit of the spatial surfaces is the ability to constrain disparate observations in a stratigraphic framework, which will be particularly important for future studies attempting to understand, for example, the temporal and spatial development of continental flood basalt volcanism. The spline interpolation method applied in this study can be equally used for other stratigraphic horizons (e.g. chemohorizon, chronohorizon, biohorizon) and in other continental flood basalt provinces (e.g. Deccan Traps, Columbia River Basalt Group).