Quaternary low-angle slip on detachment faults in Death Valley, California

Hayman, Nicholas W.; Knott, Jeffrey R.; Cowan, Darrel S.; Nemser, Eliza; Sarna-Wojcicki, Andrei M.

doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2003)031<0343:qlasod>2.0.co;2

Cited by 87 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Moresby seamount, Woodlark Basin; Floyd et al 2001); and the significance of fluids in fault zones and more generally in crustal rheology (Axen 1992;Manatschal 1999;Collettini & Barchi 2002;Hayman et al 2003;Collettini & Holdsworth 2004;Evans et al 2004;Scholz & Hanks 2004). Wills & Buck (1997) examined the possible role of stress-field rotation in the development of rooted detachment faults, and concluded that applied stresses are not in general sufficient to create low-angle normal faults that would propagate to the Earth's surface (cf.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Observations from the Basin and Range Province (western United States) pertinent to the interpretation of regional detachment faults

Christie‐Blick

Anders

Wills

et al. 2007

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This paper summarizes the results of completed and ongoing research in three areas of the Basin and Range Province of the western United States that casts doubt on the interpretation of specific regional detachment faults and the large extensional strains with which such faults are commonly associated. Given that these examples were influential in the development of ideas about low-angle normal faults, and particularly in making the case for frictional slip at dips of appreciably less than the 308 lock-up angle for m 0.6 (where m is the coefficient of friction), we advocate a critical re-examination of interpreted detachments elsewhere in the Basin and Range Province and in other extensional and passive margin settings.The Sevier Desert 'detachment' of west-central Utah is reinterpreted as a Palaeogene unconformity that has been traced to depth west of the northern Sevier Desert basin along an unrelated seismic reflection (most probably a splay of the Cretaceous-age Pavant thrust). The absence of evidence in well cuttings and cores for either brittle deformation (above) or ductile deformation (below) is inconsistent with the existence of a fault with as much as 40 km of displacement. The Pavant thrust and the structurally higher Canyon Range thrust are erosionally truncated at the western margin of the southern Sevier Desert basin, and are not offset by the 'detachment' in the manner assumed by those inferring large extension across the basin.The Mormon Peak detachment of SE Nevada is reinterpreted as a series of slide blocks on the basis of detachment characteristics and spatially variable kinematic indicators that are more closely aligned with the modern dip direction than the inferred regional extension direction. A particularly distinctive feature of the detachment is a basal layer of up to several tens of centimetres of polymictic conglomerate that was demonstrably involved in the deformation, with clastic dykes of the same material extending for several metres into overlying rocks in a manner remarkably similar to that observed at rapidly emplaced slide blocks. The Castle Cliff detachment in the nearby Beaver Dam Mountains of SW Utah is similarly regarded as a surficial feature, as originally interpreted, and consistent with its conspicuous absence in seismic reflection profiles from the adjacent sedimentary basin.The middle Miocene Eagle Mountain Formation of eastern California, interpreted on the basis of facies evidence and distinctive clast provenance to have been moved tectonically more than 80 km ESE from a location close to the Jurassic-age Hunter Mountain batholith of the Cottonwood Mountains, is reinterpreted as having accumulated in a fluvial-lacustrine rather than alluvial fanlacustrine setting, with no bearing on either the amount or direction of tectonic transport. The conglomeratic rocks upon which the provenance argument was based are pervasively channelized, with erosional relief of less than 1 m to as much as 15 m, fining-upwards successions at the same scale and abundant trough ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Axen , 1999cf. Axen , 2004Scott & Lister 1992;Axen & Selverstone 1994;Wernicke 1995;Rietbrock et al 1996;Abers et al 1997;Westaway 1999;Sorel 2000;Collettini & Barchi 2002;Hayman et al 2003).…”

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Observations from the Basin and Range Province (western United States) pertinent to the interpretation of regional detachment faults

Christie‐Blick

Anders

Wills

et al. 2007

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“…These dates may be the earliest times when dominantly crystal-plastic deformation was succeeded by brittle faulting on each of the turtleback fault zones. Knott et al (1999) and Hayman et al (2003) presented evidence demonstrating that the most recent slip on currently exposed, moderately dipping segments of the Badwater turtleback and Mormon Point faults is late Quaternary in age: the 770 ka Bishop ash bed in hanging-wall sedimentary rocks is truncated by the detachments. At Mormon Point, normal faults in the hanging wall cut the 640 ka Lava Creek B ash bed, and, in a few places, they offset lacustrine gravel dated as 120 to 180 ka (oxygen isotope stage 6).…”

Section: Detachment Faultingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural geology and kinematic history of rocks formed along low-angle normal faults, Death Valley, California

Cowan

Cladouhos

Morgan

2003

Geo. Society Am. Bull.

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Several late Cenozoic low-angle normal, or detachment, faults on the western flank of the Black Mountains are each characterized by the following, in descending structural order: (1) a hanging wall of upper Tertiary to Quaternary sedimentary and volcanic strata that displays little evidence for fault-related damage other than widely spaced planar or listric normal faults; (2) a sharp, planar, and locally striated principal slip plane forming the lower boundary of the hanging wall; (3) an upper zone-zone I-of very fine grained, fault-generated rocks composed dominantly of gouge; (4) a lower zone-zone II-of coarser-grained fault rocks consisting chiefly of foliated breccia; and (5) a variably damaged footwall, consisting of partly mylonitic Precambrian units or Tertiary plutonic rocks, that has been exhumed from depths of 10-12 km since late Miocene time. The fault rocks, which were mostly derived from the footwalls, preserve evidence for cataclastic and particulate flow. Fault rocks contain authigenic minerals but lack the cyclically deformed, mineral-filled syntectonic veins that are abundant in some other late Cenozoic high-angle and strike-slip faults.Meso-and microscale fabrics in zones I and II indicate that finite shear strains increase progressively upward, toward the principal slip plane. In a conceptual kinematic model of a shear box, displacements of the hanging wall produced a shearing flow in the fault rocks below. Some of the slip on the principal slip plane was also † Email: darrel@u.washington.edu. partitioned into localized slip on discrete sliding surfaces in zones I and II. Since 770 ka, during the latest stages of incremental deformation in the brittle shear zones, distributed flow in the fault rocks alternated with slip that was chiefly localized on the principal slip planes. In this respect, the detachment faults differ from inactive segments of the San Andreas system, along which displacements were progressively and irreversibly localized onto a single principal slip surface. The strain gradients and corresponding changes in grain size in the shear zones resemble those in mylonitic shear zones except in their symmetry. Strain gradients in the Black Mountains are notably asymmetric: they are present only below the principal slip planes, not above.

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“…Low-angle normal faults have been described in different geological situations including post-orogenic extension, exhumation of HP-LT metamorphic rocks and even intraoceanic rifting (Wernicke, 1981;1995;Lister et al, 1984;Avigad and Garfunkel, 1989;Abers et al, 1997;Axen et al, 1999;Hayman et al, 2003;Collettini and Holdsworth, 2004;Garcès and Gee, 2007). Such low-angle normal faults are often referred to as detachments.…”

Section: Crustal-scale Extension: Normal Faults Versus Post-orogenic mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rifting and shallow-dipping detachments, clues from the Corinth Rift and the Aegean

et al. 2010

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: The Corinth Rift is superimposed on the Hellenic nappe stack that formed at the expense of the Apulian continental crust above the subducting African slab. Extension started in the Pliocene and the major steep normal faults that control the geometry of the present-day rift were born very recently, some 600 Kyrs ago only. They root into a shallowdipping zone of microseismicity recorded near the base of the upper crust. The significance of this seismogenic zone is debated. Considering the northward dip of the zone of microseismicity, the depth of microearthquakes and their focal mechanisms, we observe a strong similarity with the northern Cycladic detachments in terms of expected pressure, temperature conditions and kinematics. We herein show (1) that the formation of the Corinth Rift can be considered a part of a continuum of extension that started some 30-35 Ma in the Aegean and that was recently localised in a more restricted area, (2) that the present-day structure and kinematics of the Corinth Rift can be explained with a series of decollements relayed by steeper ramps that altogether formed a mechanically weak, crustal-scale detachment, and (3) that the deformation, fluid behaviour and metamorphic features seen in the northern Cycladic metamorphic core complexes can be good analogues of the processes at work below the Corinth Rift. 2Introduction.

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Quaternary low-angle slip on detachment faults in Death Valley, California

Cited by 87 publications

References 22 publications

Observations from the Basin and Range Province (western United States) pertinent to the interpretation of regional detachment faults

Observations from the Basin and Range Province (western United States) pertinent to the interpretation of regional detachment faults

Structural geology and kinematic history of rocks formed along low-angle normal faults, Death Valley, California

Rifting and shallow-dipping detachments, clues from the Corinth Rift and the Aegean

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