How Orogen-scale Exhumed Strike-slip Faults Initiate

Abstract:

Orogen-scale strike-slip faults present one the most important geodynamic processes affecting the lithosphere-asthenosphere system. In specific subtypes, faulting is virtually initiated along hot-to-cool boundaries, e.g. at such of hot granite intrusions or metamorphic core complexes to cool country rocks. Such fault zones are often subparallel to mountain ranges and expose a wide variety of mylonitic, cataclastic and non-cohesive fault rocks, which were formed at different structural levels of the crust and are stacked within each other (“telescoping”). Exhumation of rocks is, therefore, a common feature of such strike-slip faults implying major transtensive and/or transpressive processes accompanying pure strike-slip motion. The hot-to-cool thermal structure across the fault zone significantly influences the physical fault rock properties. One major question is how and where a major strike-slip initiates and further development. Here, we propose a model in which major continental exhumed strike-slip faults potentially evolve along rheologically weak zones such as plutons or margins of metamorphic complexes. As an example, we propose a model for the Ailao Shan-Red River (ASRR) fault, SE Asia, which initiated along the edge of a plutonic belt and evolved in response to India-Asia collision with four tectonic phases.