Variation in Magnitude of Differential Stress Across an Exhumed Continental-scale Thrust Zone

Abstract:

The Moine Thrust Zone (MTZ), located in NW Scotland, formed as a result of the closing of the Iapetus Ocean and docking of various terranes and arcs (Scandian Phase of the Caledonian Orogeny, ca. 445-420 Ma). The MTZ as defined here comprises three major foreland-propagating thrust faults, the latest of which is the Moine Thrust itself, which emplaced Proterozoic Moine Supergroup psammites westward onto Cambro-Ordovician shelf sequence rocks and Lewisian basement gneiss. Presently, the north-south striking Moine Thrust Zone is exposed for more than 200 km along strike, and Scandian deformation can be traced up to 40 km eastward from the Moine Thrust towards the hinterland. The thrust system is thought to have been exhumed while still active, resulting in the exposure of deep structural levels of the MTZ.

As part of an ongoing project to study how the stress, rheology, and width of continental-scale faults vary with depth, we use the piezometer based on the grainsize of dynamically recrystallized quartz to determine the variation in magnitude of differential stress across the MTZ. We present a transect from the head of Loch Eriboll in the footwall, eastward to the base of Ben Hope in the hangingwall. Grainsize generally decreases westward and structurally downward to the Moine Thrust, where ultramylonites have grainsizes on the order of 10 µm. Higher stresses towards the foreland likely reflect lower temperatures of deformation in rocks that before thrusting were at higher structural levels, and may have triggered a switch to grainsize sensitive creep, thus resulting in localization of strain and narrowing of shear zone width.