The Northwest Trending North Boqueron Bay-Punta Montalva Fault Zone; A Through Going Active Fault System in Southwestern Puerto Rico

Roig-Silva, C.M.; Asencio, E.; Joyce, John W.

doi:10.1785/0220120115

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Faults were mapped in QGIS, a free and open-source GIS application, based on existing mapping as well as the base datasets. All structures were mapped on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation data (Rosen et al, 2000) at 30, 90 or 250 m resolution depending on the geometric complexity of the faults as well as on their relative importance in characterizing the tectonics, hazard and risk of the region.…”

Section: Mapping Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Swan Islands transform terminates in the east at the Cayman spreading center, which extends at 10-15 mm a −1 (Leroy et al, 2000;Hayman et al, 2011;Benford et al, 2012a), though like most mid-ocean ridges, the seismogenic crust is probably very thin, and it may not produce moderate to large earthquakes. To the east, the North American-Caribbean strike-slip boundary is broken into two parallel strike-slip faults, the Oriente fault in the north and the Walton fault zone in the south; the intervening oceanic crust is the western portion of the Gônave microplate (e.g., Rosencrantz and Mann, 1991;DeMets and Wiggins-Grandison, 2007).…”

Section: Cuba Jamaica and The Swan Islands Transformmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the south of the western Oriente fault, the parallel Walton fault zone accommodates the remainder of the North American-Caribbean motion, some 4-7 mm a −1 (Benford et al, 2012b) (though Symithe et al, 2015 give it a higher rate, 9-10 mm a −1 ). As with the Oriente fault, this structure becomes more complicated to the east near Jamaica and may split into active northern and southern strands (Rosencrantz and Mann, 1991); however, in the absence of available bathymetric data of sufficient resolution to map these splays, we draw the structure as a single strike-slip fault intersecting central-western Jamaica.…”

Section: Cuba Jamaica and The Swan Islands Transformmentioning

confidence: 99%

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CCAF-DB: the Caribbean and Central American active fault database

Styron

Garcia-Pelaez

Pagani

2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. A database of ∼250 active fault traces in the Caribbean and Central American regions has been assembled to characterize the seismic hazard and tectonics of the area, as part of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation's Caribbean and Central American Risk Assessment (CCARA) project. The dataset is available in many vector GIS formats and contains fault trace locations as well as attributes describing fault geometry and kinematics, slip rates, data quality and uncertainty, and other metadata as available. The database is public and open source (available at: https://github.com/GEMScienceTools/central_am_carib_faults, last access: 23 March 2020), will be updated progressively as new data become available, and is open to community contribution. The active fault data show deformation in the region to be centered around the margins of the Caribbean plate. Northern Central America has sinistral and reverse faults north of the sinistral Motagua–Polochic fault zone, which accommodates sinistral Caribbean–North American relative motion. The Central Highlands in Central America extend east–west along a broad array of normal faults, bound by the Motagua–Polochic fault zone in the north and trench-parallel dextral faulting in the southwest between the Caribbean plate and the Central American forearc. Faulting in southern Central America is complicated, with trench-parallel reverse and sinistral faults. The northern Caribbean–North American plate boundary is sinistral off the shore of Central America, with transpressive stepovers through Jamaica, southern Cuba and Hispaniola. Farther east, deformation becomes more contractional closer to the Lesser Antilles subduction zone, with minor extension and sinistral shear throughout the upper plate, accommodating oblique convergence of the Caribbean and North American plates.

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Section: Mapping Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cuba Jamaica and The Swan Islands Transformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cuba Jamaica and The Swan Islands Transformmentioning

confidence: 99%

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CCAF-DB: the Caribbean and Central American active fault database

Styron

Garcia-Pelaez

Pagani

2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…The Punta Montalva Fault was proposed by Roig-Silva et al (2013) to be an active strike-slip fault extending for 33 km from the tip of Punta Montalva northwestward to Boquerón Bay (Figure 3) This proposed fault appears, however, to have had a little role in the initiation of the 2019-2020 seismic sequence, which started several km ENE of the southeastern end of the fault (Figure 2a). Only during June 2020, five months after the January 7, 2020 Mw6.4 earthquake, did moderate-sized strike-slip earthquakes take place onshore along the southeastern-most 5-km of the fault (Figure 2d).…”

Section: The Role Of Punta Montalva Fault In the Seismic Sequencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A fault, named San Francisco Fault, was extrapolated from onshore into Guayanilla Bay (Grossman, 1963). A 33-km-long left-lateral strike-slip fault, named Punta Montalva Fault, stretching from Punta Montalva to north Boquerón Bay on the west coast of Puerto Rico was postulated largely based on morphology by Roig-Silva et al (2013; Figure 3). Garrison (1969) interpreted a several-hundred-milliseconds-deep half-graben from Sparker seismic reflection data on the insular shelf south of Ponce.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mature Diffuse Tectonic Block Boundary Revealed by the 2020 Southwestern Puerto Rico Seismic Sequence

et al. 2022

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Distributed faulting typically tends to coalesce into one or a few faults with repeated deformation. The progression of clustered medium‐sized (≥Mw4.5) earthquakes during the 2020 seismic sequence in southwestern Puerto Rico (SWPR), modeling shoreline subsidence from InSAR, and sub‐seafloor mapping by high‐resolution seismic reflection profiles, suggest that the 2020 SWPR seismic sequence was distributed across several short intersecting strike‐slip and normal faults beneath the insular shelf and upper slope of Guayanilla submarine canyon. Multibeam bathymetry map of the seafloor shows significant erosion and retreat of the shelf edge in the area of seismic activity as well as slope‐parallel lineaments and submarine canyon meanders that typically develop over geological time. The T‐axis of the moderate earthquakes further matches the extension direction previously measured on post early Pliocene (∼>3 Ma) faults. We conclude that although similar deformation has likely taken place in this area during recent geologic time, it does not appear to have coalesced during this time. The deformation may represent the southernmost part of a diffuse boundary, the Western Puerto Rico Deformation Boundary, which accommodates differential movement between the Puerto Rico and Hispaniola arc blocks. This differential movement is possibly driven by the differential seismic coupling along the Puerto Rico—Hispaniola subduction zone. We propose that the compositional heterogeneity across the island arc retards the process of focusing the deformation into a single fault. Given the evidence presented here, we should not expect a single large event in this area but similar diffuse sequences in the future.

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