GeoCognitive insights into folding styles, hydrocarbon traps, and environmental hazards in the salt-influenced hinterland of Bandar Abbas, Zagros

A bstract The hinterland of Bandar Abbas within the Zagros orogenic belt is investigated as a natural laboratory for exploring the interplay between folding styles, hydrocarbon trap evolution, and geoenvironmental hazards. A GeoCognitive workflow, integrating high-resolution isopach mapping, seismic attribute fusion, unsupervised machine learning, and sandbox analogue modeling, has been developed to quantify how salt-related deformation and basement fault reactivation govern trap geometry, compartmentalization, and sealing integrity. Unlike most previous regional studies that relied on qualitative seismic interpretation or basic thickness contouring, the present approach captures subtle depocenters, accommodation zones, and stratigraphic compartmentalization with unprecedented resolution. Furthermore, where earlier research has often depicted salt tectonics as a passive background process, the results demonstrate its proactive role through halokinetic pulsation, mini-basin formation, and syn-depositional folding, which dynamically shape both reservoir distribution and environmental vulnerability. This study shows that the same tectonic processes responsible for hydrocarbon accumulation simultaneously create geoenvironmental risks, including fluid leakage along reactivated faults, groundwater contamination through hydraulically connected aquifers, and localized induced seismicity during production. While machine learning and sandbox models have been applied in global analogs such as the North Sea and the Santos Basin, no integrated, uncertainty-aware GeoCognitive framework has previously been implemented for the Zagros. By harmonizing digital analytics with analogue validation, this research not only advances predictive accuracy in hydrocarbon assessment but also embeds hazard awareness, establishing a transferable, hazard-aware paradigm for sustainable subsurface management in salt-influenced fold-and-thrust belts worldwide.