Identification of tectonically active areas using DEM: a quantitative morphometric analysis of Mt. Medvednica, NW Croatia

Abstract

1 Fac ulty of Min ing, Ge ol ogy and Pe tro leum En gi neer ing, Uni ver sity of Zagreb, Pierottijeva 6, Zagreb, Croatia Mt. Medvednica is an inselberg in NW Croatia, which lies at the in ter sec tion be tween the Southeastern Alps, Northwestern Dinarides and Tisza Mega-Unit of the Pannonian Ba sin. Due to the Pliocene-Quaternary N-S di rected short en ing, Mt. Medvednica ex pe ri enced 1500-2000 m of dif fer en tial up lift and now ex poses pre-Neo gene and Neo gene tec tonic and stratigraphic units that are sur rounded by Pliocene-Quaternary sed i ments. This pa per eval u ates a set of quan ti ta tive morphometry meth ods used to iden tify tec toni cally ac tive ar eas within this re gion characterized by low-rate ac tive fold ing and fault ing dur ing the Pliocene-Quaternary. Our anal y sis em ployed ex trac tion of hypsometric curves, cal cu la tion of a hypsometric in te gral, asym me try fac tor, and sta tis ti cal pa ram e ters of lon gi tu di nal stream pro files along 36 drain age bas ins de lin eated from a 25 m res o lu tion DEM of Mt. Medvednica area. De spite lithological het er o ge ne ity of the study area, the morphometric pa ram e ters we ob tain are good in di ca tors for dis crim i nat ing tec toni cally ac tive from in ac tive ar eas. We in terpret that the most tec toni cally ac tive ar eas are lo cated at the SW cor ner and in the cen tral part of Mt. Medvednica, where they are likely re lated to the North Medvednica Bound ary Fault, and to the Kašina Fault, re spec tively. The lat ter di vides the range into dis tinct NE and SW mor pho log i cal and struc tural ar eas.

Landscape response to recent tectonic deformation in the SW Pannonian Basin: Evidence from DEM-based morphometric analysis of the Bilogora Mt. area, NE Croatia

“…Channel steepness and concavity can be used to suggest differences in recent tectonic (Hack, 1973;Flint, 1974;Howard and Kerby 1983;Whipple, 2004;Wobus et al, 2006, Cyr et al 2010Matoš et al, 2014):…”

“…The Asymmetry Factor (AF) has been used to quantify drainage basin geometries and can indicate possible tilting of the basin (Hare and Gardner, 1985;Keller and Pinter, 2002;Molin et al, 2004;Kale andShejwalkar, 2008, El Hamdouni et al, 2008;Dehbozorgi et al, 2010;Pérez-Peña et al, 2010;Matoš et al, 2014).…”

“…The figure 9 shows preferred asymmetry sense on both hillslopes that are divided by six transition zones. These transition zones were delineated by the procedure presented in Matoš et al (2014) that implied definition of boundary zones between drainage basins characterized by i)…”

“…These stream profiles are characterized by concavity factor (C f ≥58%) and maximum concavity (C max ≤0.475) values in the upper portion of stream profiles (∆l/L ≤0.261),(Fig. 12).Stream trunk channels characteristics were also compared by a scatter plot of C max against distance from source (∆l/L)(Ruszkiczay-Rüdiger et al 2009;Matoš et al, 2014).…”

The application of satellite technology in the study of geodynamic movements in the wider Zagreb area

“…GPS technology in the last twenty years has established itself as a major geodetic contribution to the geodynamic research [3], and the establishment of the respective geodynamic network, in 1997, opened the space for development of the geodynamic project to monitor tectonic movements in the Zagreb mountain Medvednica and boundary areas of several important tectonic units that meet in the wider Zagreb area [4,5]. On one side are the branches of the southeast Alps, on the other side the Dinarides, and on the third side is the Pannonian Basin.…”