The intracontinental NE German Basin is of great local and regional scientific and commercial importance. As part of the Southern Permian Basin it is one of a series of related basins which have been extensively explored, not only for their hydrocarbons, but also for other raw materials, groundwater and geothermal energy potential.

Spanning the region from the Tornquist Zone - an inferred Paleozoic suture - to the Harz Mountains, and from the North Sea to Poland, the NE German Basin shows a complex image with various geophysical anomalies, magmatic intrusions and several changes in tectonic regime and fault systems during the past 300 Ma. The underlying mechanisms controlling basin formation in the region, however, are poorly understood (see tectonic map).

The BASIN '96 seismic data cross the entire NE German Basin and were gathered as a combined offshore-onshore survey (800 km reflection line offshore - 500 km onshore) with the aim

• to consistently image the entire basin and its margins on a lithospheric scale,
• to reveal the basin structure below the base of the Zechstein and into the mantle,
• to image the suture zone between Caledonian and Variscan basement,
• to develop a geodynamic model of the basin formation.

BASIN 9601 and BASIN 9602:

The 330 km long, NE-SW trending onshore seismic transect (profile BASIN 9601) across the NE German Basin and the 75 km long, perpendicular cross-line in the basin centre (profile BASIN 9602) reveal the structure of the basin between the stable Precambrian Baltic Shield to the north and the weaker Mid-European Variscides to the south. Using the same receiver spread, a high-coverage vibroseis and a low-fold explosive seismic technique were used for energy penetration along both profiles.
Additional experiment components were (A) cross-line recordings with 9 layouts on the main profile 9601, and 2 layouts on line 9602 (active and passive vibroseis, recording of all explosive shots); (B) a wide-angle experiment with 4 fixed configurations (Rügen, Gardelegen, Harz, east of line 9602) and constant offset recording in the northern half of the basin (Rügen-Elbe).

PQ2-002 - PQ2-006, PQ2-008, PQ2-009.1 - PQ2-009.4:

The offshore component was acquired in collaboration with the BGR Hannover during cruise Polar Queen 2. Ten near-vertical incidence reflection seismic lines were shot in the SW Baltic Sea. The signals from the airguns were also recorded by mobile land-stations and broadband seismographs in Sweden, Denmark and Germany, providing important velocity information.