Blackening of fault gouge by comminution and pyrolysis of carbonaceous materials during earthquake slip

Abstract:

Fault gouges often exhibit various colors (white-pink-green-brown-gray-black), and particularly those developed in sedimentary rocks show gray to black. However, the physicochemical process for the color transition accompanied with seismic slip has not yet been fully understood. On the other hand, determination of the peak temperature during slip is crucial to identify the faulting mechanism during an earthquake, so that various temperature proxies have been proposed. For example, 1) magnetite formation at high temperature of ≥400 °C, 2) anomalies in the concentrations of fluid-mobile trace elements (Sr, Cs, Rb, and Li) and in the Sr isotope ratios, indicating presence of high-temperature fluid of ≥350 °C, 3) dehydroxylation of clay minerals, 4) thermal decomposition of carbonate minerals, and 5) thermal maturation of carbonaceous material examined by vitrinite reflectance measurement and by infrared and Raman spectroscopies. However, these proxies required high-level analyses in laboratory, so easy method to detect the record of high temperature preliminarily on field would be expected. In this study, we reproduced the blackening of synthetic fault sample by using high-velocity friction apparatus, thermogravimetric, and milling machine, and evaluated the color transition and organic chemical property of the samples by using UV-visible/NIR spectrophotometer and pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. We discuss the process of the blackening taking comminution and pyrolysis of carbonaceous materials into consideration.