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Tectonics, fault zones, and topography in the Alaska-Canada Cordillera with a focus on the Alaska Range and Denali fault zone

October 21, 2022

Synergistic interactions between geologic structures and topography have long been recognized to reflect numerous Earth processes and rock properties over time. It was not until the advent of plate tectonics in the midtwentieth century that researchers began to view the nature of the northern Cordillera orogen as a quilt of foreign pieces of crust or “suspect terranes”. The Alaska Range shows complexity in topographic, geometric, and exhumational age asymmetry along and across the strike of the Denali fault zone attributable to several factors. Although direct exposures of the Denali fault zone in bedrock are exceptionally rare, regional to outcrop scale observations show the common internal structure consisting of some degree of strain localization in one or more, and presumably relatively weak, fault cores and an associated, commonly hydrothermally altered, damage zone.

Publication Year 2022
Title Tectonics, fault zones, and topography in the Alaska-Canada Cordillera with a focus on the Alaska Range and Denali fault zone
DOI 10.1002/9781119813392.ch13
Authors Jonathan Caine, Jeff A. Benowitz
Publication Type Book Chapter
Publication Subtype Book Chapter
Index ID 70238476
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center
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