Quaternary low-angle slip on detachment faults in Death Valley, California
Detachment faults on the west flank of the Black Mountains (Nevada and California) dip 29??-36?? and cut subhorizontal layers of the 0.77 Ma Bishop ash. Steeply dipping normal faults confined to the hanging walls of the detachments offset layers of the 0.64 Ma Lava Creek B tephra and the base of 0.12-0.18 Ma Lake Manly gravel. These faults sole into and do not cut the low-angle detachments. Therefore the detachments accrued any measurable slip across the kinematically linked hanging-wall faults. An analysis of the orientations of hundreds of the hanging-wall faults shows that extension occurred at modest slip rates (<1 mm/yr) under a steep to vertically oriented maximum principal stress. The Black Mountain detachments are appropriately described as the basal detachments of near-critical Coulomb wedges. We infer that the formation of late Pleistocene and Holocene range-front fault scarps accompanied seismogenic slip on the detachments.
Citation Information
Publication Year | 2003 |
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Title | Quaternary low-angle slip on detachment faults in Death Valley, California |
DOI | 10.1130/0091-7613(2003)031<0343:QLASOD>2.0.CO;2 |
Authors | N.W. Hayman, J.R. Knott, D.S. Cowan, E. Nemser, A.M. Sarna-Wojcicki |
Publication Type | Article |
Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
Series Title | Geology |
Index ID | 70025788 |
Record Source | USGS Publications Warehouse |