San Andres Rift, Nicaraguan Shelf: A 346-Km-Long, North-South Rift Zone Actively Extending the Interior of the “Stable” Caribbean Plate

Abstract:

The San Andres rift (SAR) is an active, 015°-trending, bathymetric and structural rift basin that extends for 346 km across the Nicaraguan platform and varies in bathymetric width from 11-27 km and in water depth from 1,250 to 2,500 m. We used four 2D regional seismic lines tied to two offshore, industry wells located west of the SAR on the Nicaraguan platform to map normal faults, transfer faults, and possibly volcanic features with the rift. The Colombian islands of San Andres (26 km²) and Providencia (17 km²) are footwall uplifts along west-dipping, normal fault bounding the eastern margin of the rift. Mapping indicates the pre-rift section is Late Cretaceous to Oligocene in age and that the onset of rifting began in the early to middle Miocene as shown by wedging of the Miocene and younger sedimentary fill controlled by north-south-striking normal faults. Structural restorations at two locations across the rift shows that the basin opened mainly by dip-slip fault motions producing a total, east-west extension of 18 km in the north and 15 km in the south. Structural restoration shows the rift formed on a 37-km-wide, elongate basement high - possibly of late Cretaceous, volcanic origin and related to the Caribbean large igneous province. Previous workers have noted that the SAR is associated with province of Pliocene to Quaternary seamounts and volcanoes which range from non-alkaline to mildly alkaline, including volcanic rocks on Providencia described as andesites and rhyolites. The SAR forms one of the few recognizable belts of recorded seismicity within the Caribbean plate. The origin of the SAR is related to Miocene and younger left-lateral displacement along the Pedro Banks fault to the north and the southwestern Hess fault to the south. We propose that the amount of left-lateral displacement that created the rift is equivalent to the amount of extension that formed it: 18-20 km.