scholarly journals Extreme Quaternary plate boundary exhumation and strike slip localized along the southern Fairweather fault, Alaska, USA

Geology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 602-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard O. Lease ◽  
Peter J. Haeussler ◽  
Robert C. Witter ◽  
Daniel F. Stockli ◽  
Adrian M. Bender ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Sedimentary Cover ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Slip Rate ◽  
Strike Slip ◽  
Plate Motion ◽  
The North ◽  
Exhumation Rates ◽  
Restraining Bend

Abstract The Fairweather fault (southeastern Alaska, USA) is Earth’s fastest-slipping intracontinental strike-slip fault, but its long-term role in localizing Yakutat–(Pacific–)North America plate motion is poorly constrained. This plate boundary fault transitions northward from pure strike slip to transpression where it comes onshore and undergoes a <25°, 30-km-long restraining double bend. To the east, apatite (U-Th)/He (AHe) ages indicate that North America exhumation rates increase stepwise from ∼0.7 to 1.7 km/m.y. across the bend. In contrast, to the west, AHe age-depth data indicate that extremely rapid 5–10 km/m.y. Yakutat exhumation rates are localized within the bend. Further northwest, Yakutat AHe and zircon (U-Th)/He (ZHe) ages gradually increase from 0.3 to 2.6 Ma over 150 km and depict an interval of extremely rapid >6–8 km/m.y. exhumation rates that increases in age away from the bend. We interpret this migration of rapid, transient exhumation to reflect prolonged advection of the Cenozoic–Cretaceous sedimentary cover of the eastern Yakutat microplate through a stationary restraining bend along the edge of the North America plate. Yakutat cooling ages imply a long-term strike-slip rate (54 ± 6 km/m.y.) that mimics the millennial (53 ± 5 m/k.y.) and decadal (46 mm/yr) rates. Fairweather fault slip can account for all Pacific–North America relative plate motion throughout Quaternary time and indicates stability of highly localized plate boundary strike slip on a single fault where extreme rock uplift rates are persistently localized within a restraining bend.

Intersecting intracontinental Tertiary transform fault systems in the North American Cordillera

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1262-1274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambertus C. Struik
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
North American ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Late Eocene ◽  
Strike Slip ◽  
Plate Motion ◽  
Crustal Extension ◽  
North American Cordillera ◽  
The North ◽  
Dextral Strike Slip

In central British Columbia, north-trending dextral strike-slip faults that cut Late Eocene granite also truncate northwest-trending dextral strike-slip faults. The northwest-trending strike-slip faults bound the Wolverine Metamorphic Complex (Wolverine Complex), which has been uplifted primarily by northwest–southeast Eocene crustal extension and somewhat by Late Eocene northerly extension. The crustal extension is indicated by shallow-dipping extensions faults, dyke complexes, and stretching lineations. The Wolverine Complex and its bounding faults define a crustal pull-apart in an en echelon dextral transform. The northwest- and north-trending dextral strike-slip faults in central British Columbia are the continuations of faults that transect the interior of the North American Cordillera, and they represent at least two distinct plate boundaries intermittently active during the Early to Middle Eocene, and the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene. Each of these systems consists of en echelon strike-slip faults linked by extensional pull-aparts, locally represented by metamorphic core complexes. These two plate-boundary systems represent two distinct plate-motion configurations between the North American and Kula–Pacific plates. The older plate boundary is truncated and disrupted by the younger one. These two systems may in turn be disrupted by a younger and different plate-motion configuration represented by the transverse Basin and Range extension complex and its northern and southern transform boundary faults.

scholarly journals Late Quaternary uplift along the North America-Caribbean plate boundary: Evidence from the sea level record of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

2017 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 54-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Muhs ◽  
Eugene S. Schweig ◽  
Kathleen R. Simmons ◽  
Robert B. Halley
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Caribbean Plate ◽  
The North ◽  
Guantanamo Bay

The Cenozoic tectonostratigraphic evolution of the Barracuda Ridge and Tiburon Rise, at the western end of the North America–South America plate boundary zone

2012 ◽  
Vol 303-306 ◽  
pp. 154-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Pichot ◽  
M. Patriat ◽  
G.K. Westbrook ◽  
T. Nalpas ◽  
M.A. Gutscher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
South America ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Boundary Zone ◽  
The North ◽  
America South ◽  
Plate Boundary Zone

scholarly journals Cenozoic tectonic history of the North America-Caribbean plate boundary zone in western Cuba

1997 ◽  
Vol 102 (B5) ◽  
pp. 10055-10082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark B. Gordon ◽  
Paul Mann ◽  
Dámaso Cáceres ◽  
Raúl Flores
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Boundary Zone ◽  
Caribbean Plate ◽  
The North ◽  
Tectonic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Plate Boundary Zone

scholarly journals Propagation of a strike-slip plate boundary within an extensional environment: the westward propagation of the North Anatolian Fault

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (11) ◽  
pp. 1416-1439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Le Pichon ◽  
A.M. Celâl Şengör ◽  
Julia Kende ◽  
Caner İmren ◽  
Pierre Henry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Strike Slip ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Plate Boundaries ◽  
Sea Of Marmara ◽  
The North ◽  
Gulf Of Corinth ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
North Aegean ◽  
Narrow Plate

We document the establishment of the Aegea–Anatolia/Eurasia plate boundary in Pliocene–Pleistocene time. Before 2 Ma, no localized plate boundary existed north of the Aegean portion of the Anatolia plate and the shear produced by the motion of Anatolia–Aegea with respect to Eurasia was distributed over the whole width of the Aegean – West Anatolian western portion. In 4.5 Ma, a shear zone comparable to the Gulf of Corinth was formed in the present Sea of Marmara. The initial extensional basins were cut by the strike-slip Main Marmara Fault system after 2.5 Ma. Shortly after, the plate boundary migrated west of the Sea of Marmara along the northern border of Aegea from the North Aegean Trough, to the Gulf of Corinth area and to the Kefalonia Fault. There, it finally linked with the northern tip of the Aegean subduction zone, completing the system of plate boundaries delimiting the Anatolia–Aegea plate. We have related the change in the distribution of shear from Miocene to Pliocene to the formation of a relatively undeforming Aegea block in Pliocene that forced the shear to be distributed over a narrow plate boundary to the north of it. We attribute the formation of this block to the northeastward progression of the oceanic Ionian slab. We propose that the slab cuts the overlying lithosphere from asthenospheric sources and induces a shortening environment over it.

Concluding remarks

1990 ◽  
Vol 331 (1620) ◽  
pp. 643-647
Keyword(s):  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Strike Slip ◽  
Data Handling ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
The North ◽  
Tectonic Processes ◽  
Regional Tectonic ◽  
Plate Boundary Zone ◽  
Orogenic Belts

During the course of this Discussion Meeting, a very large amount of regional tectonic geology was displayed, and debated critically in a terrane framework, on scales ranging from the whole of the North American Precambrian or the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Tethys down to particular segments of the Caledonides and Alpides. A wide spectrum of opinion was expressed from those who believe that the terrane methodology is a critical and essential objective stage in data handling before any rational palaeogeographic and palaeotectonic synthesis can be attempted in plate boundary zones to those who believe that the terrane philosophy is fundamentally flawed, dangerous, and pernicious, in that it leads to random data collection and the obscuring of fundamental plate tectonic processes. Another view was that terranology has been useful in drawing our attention to the importance of large pre-collisional strike—slip or transform motions in orogenic belts and the juxtaposition of disparate elements and zones. Yet another position was that there is nothing new in terranology that is not implicitly and explicitly inherent in plate boundary processes and that terrane analysis is simply another harmless word for what most careful regional geological synthesizers have been doing since the early 1970s. Naturally, no coherent consensus view emerged from the discussion, but an important result was that a huge amount of excellent regional and global geology and tectonic ideas were discussed in the context of the problems and complexities of plate boundary zone evolution and the mechanisms by which objects from the size of ‘knockers’ to continents, detach, move and weld to form collages at all scales.

scholarly journals A Surface Wind Extremes (“Wind Lulls” and “Wind Blows”) Climatology for Central North America and Adjoining Oceans (1979–2012)

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 643-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny W. Malloy ◽  
Daniel S. Krahenbuhl ◽  
Chad E. Bush ◽  
Robert C. Balling ◽  
Michael M. Santoro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Grid Point ◽  
Surface Wind ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
The North ◽  
Anomalous Wind

AbstractThis study explores long-term deviations from wind averages, specifically near the surface across central North America and adjoining oceans (25°–50°N, 60°–130°W) for 1979–2012 (408 months) by utilizing the North American Regional Reanalysis 10-m wind climate datasets. Regions where periods of anomalous wind speeds were observed (i.e., 1 standard deviation below/above both the long-term mean annual and mean monthly wind speeds at each grid point) were identified. These two climatic extremes were classified as wind lulls (WLs; below) or wind blows (WBs; above). Major findings for the North American study domain indicate that 1) mean annual wind speeds range from 1–3 m s−1 (Intermountain West) to over 7 m s−1 (offshore the East and West Coasts), 2) mean durations for WLs and WBs are high for much of the southeastern United States and for the open waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, respectively, 3) the longest WL/WB episodes for the majority of locations have historically not exceeded 5 months, 4) WLs and WBs are most common during June and October, respectively, for the upper Midwest, 5) WLs are least frequent over the southwestern United States during the North American monsoon, and 6) no significant anomalous wind trends exist over land or sea.

scholarly journals Geomorphic expression and slip rate of the Fairweather fault, southeast Alaska, and evidence for predecessors of the 1958 rupture

Geosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Witter ◽  
Adrian M. Bender ◽  
Katherine M. Scharer ◽  
Christopher B. DuRoss ◽  
Peter J. Haeussler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Active Faults ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
Slip Rate ◽  
Strike Slip ◽  
Tectonic Deformation ◽  
Plate Boundaries ◽  
Slip Rates ◽  
Southeast Alaska ◽  
The Past ◽  
Show Evidence

Active traces of the southern Fairweather fault were revealed by light detection and ranging (lidar) and show evidence for transpressional deformation between North America and the Yakutat block in southeast Alaska. We map the Holocene geomorphic expression of tectonic deformation along the southern 30 km of the Fairweather fault, which ruptured in the 1958 moment magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Digital maps of surficial geology, geomorphology, and active faults illustrate both strike-slip and dip-slip deformation styles within a 10°–30° double restraining bend where the southern Fairweather fault steps offshore to the Queen Charlotte fault. We measure offset landforms along the fault and calibrate legacy 14C data to reassess the rate of Holocene strike-slip motion (≥49 mm/yr), which corroborates published estimates that place most of the plate boundary motion on the Fairweather fault. Our slip-rate estimates allow a component of oblique-reverse motion to be accommodated by contractional structures west of the Fairweather fault consistent with geodetic block models. Stratigraphic and structural relations in hand-dug excavations across two active fault strands provide an incomplete paleoseismic record including evidence for up to six surface ruptures in the past 5600 years, and at least two to four events in the past 810 years. The incomplete record suggests an earthquake recurrence interval of ≥270 years—much longer than intervals <100 years implied by published slip rates and expected earthquake displacements. Our paleoseismic observations and map of active traces of the southern Fairweather fault illustrate the complexity of transpressional deformation and seismic potential along one of Earth’s fastest strike-slip plate boundaries.

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