Fault (geology)

About: Fault (geology) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26732 publications have been published within this topic receiving 744535 citations.

Late Paleozoic tectonic history of the Ertix Fault in the Chinese Altai and its implications for the development of the Central Asian Orogenic System

Abstract: The Central Asian Orogenic System (CAOS) is one of the largest Phanerozoic accretionary orogens in the world and may represent a signifi cant site of continental growth. Its origin has been explained by two competing models: syn-subduction strikeslip duplication of a single (>1000 km) long-lived arc (ca. 630‐360 Ma) or collision of multiple arcs and micro-continents. Central to the debate are the relative roles of syn-subduction strike-slip faulting versus thrusting. In both models, the Ertix fault fi gures prominently, either as a roof fault of a large strike-slip duplex system developed during oceanic subduction or as a suture of arc-continent or continent-continent collision. In order to differentiate between the above models, we conducted fi eld mapping, detailed kinematic analysis, and geochronological dating of the Ertix fault zone in the Chinese Altai. Our work indicates that the fault is a crustal-scale thrust that was active in the Permian. Its hanging wall records two pulses of magmatism ca. 450 Ma and ca. 280 Ma and experienced peak pressure and temperature of 6.2‐7.7 kbar and 560‐ 670 °C. Our geologic observations, together with the existing geologic information, favor a tectonic model that involves two episodes of subduction below the Altai arc: fi rst, in the Ordovician, along a south-dipping subduction zone; and second, in the late Carboniferous and early Permian along northdipping subduction of the Junggar ocean. It was during the latter event that a melange complex was underplated below the older Ordovician arc, metamorphosed at lower crustal depths, and then exhumed to the upper crust along the south-directed Ertix thrust zone.

Evidence of supershear during the 2018 magnitude 7.5 Palu earthquake from space geodesy

Abstract: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit the city of Palu in Sulawesi, Indonesia on 28 September 2018 at 10:02:43 (coordinated universal time). It was followed a few minutes later by a 4–7-m-high tsunami. Palu is situated in a narrow pull-apart basin surrounded by high mountains of up to 2,000 m altitude. This morphology has been created by a releasing bend in the Palu-Koro fault, a rapidly moving left-lateral strike-slip fault. Here we present observations derived from optical and radar satellite imagery that constrain the ground surface displacements associated with the earthquake in great detail. Mapping of the main rupture and associated secondary structures shows that the slip initiated on a structurally complex and previously unknown fault to the north, extended southwards over 180 km and passed through two major releasing bends. The 30 km section of the rupture south of Palu city is extremely linear, and slightly offset from the mapped geological fault at the surface. This part of the rupture accommodates a large and smooth surface slip of 4–7 m, with no shallow slip deficit. Almost no aftershock seismicity was recorded from this section of the fault. As these characteristics are similar to those from known supershear segments, we conclude that the Palu earthquake probably ruptured this segment at supershear velocities. The devastating 2018 magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Palu, Indonesia, ruptured at supershear speeds according to evidence from space geodesy.

Subsidence in Late Paleozoic basins in the northern Appalachians

Abstract: During the interval between continental collision in the Devonian and continental breakup in the Triassic the northern Appalachians became the site of a wide plate boundary zone of dominantly right-lateral strike slip. As is typical of intracontinental transforms, tectonism was both diachronous and rapidly variable along strike through regimes of ‘pure’ strike slip, transpressional deformation, and rapid subsidence of extensional basins. Up to 9 km of mainly nonmarine, clastic sediments accumulated in these local depocenters, which subsided episodically in two stages: (1) an initial phase of stretching and thinning of the lithosphere, when subsidence was rapid, fault controlled, and often accompanied by volcanism and (2) a subsequent phase of gradual thermal subsidence, during which the depositional basins expanded to bury the earlier border faults and progressively younger sedimentary units onlapped basement. The largest depocenter, the Magdalen Basin, opened as a pull-apart between strike slip faults in Newfoundland and New Brunswick from late Devonian to early Carboniferous. Subsequent thermal subsidence affected a large area during medial and late Carboniferous, a phenomenon that is well recorded to the north and west, where no later tectonism occurred. In areas to the south and east of the basin, strike slip on other faults continued into the time of thermal subsidence, introducing complications such as localized transpressional deformation and rapid subsidence in smaller pull-aparts.