Fluid-Assisted Shear Failure Within a Ductile Shear Zone

Abstract:

Exhumed shear zones often contain folded and/or dynamically recrystallized structures such as veins and pseudotachylytes that record contemporaneous brittle and ductile deformation representing mixed bulk rheology. Here, we constrain the conditions that promote the transitions between ductile and brittle deformation by investigating quartz veins with shear offsets in the Saddlebag Lake shear zone in the central Sierra Nevada, California. Mesozoic metasedimentary rocks within the shear zone contain transposed bedding, strong cleavage, dextrally rotated porphyroclasts, and a steep mineral lineation, which together suggest an overall transpressive kinematic regime for the ductile deformation. Foliation sub-parallel veins are one subset of the veins in the shear zone. They have observed horizontal trace lengths of up to around 5 meters, though most are obscured by limited exposure, and displacements range from ~3-30 mm, with 1-5 mm of opening. Foliation sub-parallel veins are folded with the foliation and quartz microstructures and fluid inclusion thermobarometry measurements from vein samples indicate temperatures during vein formation by fracture were between 300-680°C. Quartz δ¹⁸O values (+5.9 to +16.5) suggest extended fluid-rock interaction that involved magmatic (δ¹⁸O ~ +8 to +10) and meteoric (δ¹⁸O down to –1) fluids. Foliation sub-parallel veins are most abundant in relatively massive, quartz-rich rocks where they are boudinaged, indicating they were rigid inclusions after formation. Based on the orientation and spatial distribution of the veins, we infer that they formed under high differential stress with pore pressures sufficiently high for the rocks to be critically stressed for shear failure along mechanically weak foliation planes. These observations suggest high pore pressures and mechanical heterogeneity at a variety of scales are necessary conditions for nucleation of shear fractures within ductile shear zones.