Crustal Strike-Slip Faulting along Small Circle Paths in the Northwestern United States

Abstract:

Late Cenozoic and Quaternary faults, seismicity lineaments, and focal mechanisms provide evidence that clockwise rotation of Washington and Oregon is accommodated by north-directed thrusting and strike-slip deformation in the Washington segment of the Cascadia forearc. Curvilinear NW- to NNW-trending high-angle strike-slip faults and seismicity lineaments define small circles around an Euler pole (117.7°W, 47.9°N) of rotation relative to North America that approximates GPS-derived poles for the rotation of eastern Washington and the Snake River Plain. Although the lengths of strike-slip faults that follow small circle paths suggest maximum earthquake magnitudes of M6.6 to M7.2, their slip rates calculated from the Euler pole are low (0.3 to 0.5 mm/yr). Many normal faults in the Lewis and Clark Zone in Montana, the Centennial fault system north of the Snake River Plain, west of the Wasatch Front, in the northern Basin and Range, and locally east of the Oregon Cascade arc are radial to this pole of rotation, suggesting that these normal faults help accommodate this crustal rotation. Regions undergoing contraction in western Washington and northwestern Oregon are separated from those to the east undergoing extension by lines radial to the Euler pole. In our regional kinematic model, dextral faults along small circles connect SW-directed crustal extension in the Intermountain Seismic Belt and E-directed extension in the Cascade arc south of Mount Hood to N-directed contraction in the Olympic Peninsula, Puget Lowland, and the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt. The lack of Quaternary faulting and seismicity in the Oregon segment of the forearc is consistent with its clockwise rotation as a rigid block. Potential drivers of the crustal rotation include westward slab rollback and the Yellowstone geoid high, and the overall velocity field may integrate the response of rotating blocks and distributed deformation between them.