New CHIRP Seismic Images of Submarine Terraces Around San Clemente Island Constrain its Tectonic Evolution and Geomorphology

Abstract:

<p"><spanso-fareast-''; mso-bidi-'';="mso-bidi-'';" mso-fareast-language:="mso-fareast-language:" en-us;"="EN-US;"">New High-resolution CHIRP data acquired on the R/V Point Loma in 2015 imaged flights of submarine Terraces off of San Clemente Island.  Outboard terraces at ~90 to 115 m below sea level (using a nominal water column velocity of 1500 m/s) may correlate with the Marine Isotope Stage 2 (MIS2); the last glacial maximum (LGM).  Submarine terraces were mapped on both the gentle sloping windward (west) and the steeper sloping leeward (east) sides of San Clemente Island. The submarine terrace’s depths are roughly the same on both sides of the island and suggest uniform uplift. These findings are consistent with the onshore mapping of terraces on San Clemente Island. The island exhibits a marked asymmetry both onshore and offshore, with a steeply dipping eastern margin and a gentle dipping western margin. This marked asymmetry cannot be explained by the uniform uplift of San Clemente Island based on the observed onshore and offshore terraces. In our model, the asymmetry of San Clemente Island records an early phase of predominantly extensional deformation during the middle to late Miocene, with San Clemente Island being the footwall block. Such asymmetry is also observed across the 30-mile bank and the Coronado Bank with steeply dipping eastern margins and gently dipping western margins. New regional multichannel seismic data and reprocessed industry data show no sediment divergence along the hangingwall blocks, which suggests that extensional deformation predated sedimentation. Finally, the elevations of the terraces on San Clemente Island are similar to those observed on the mainland from Baja California to Newport Beach, requiring any tectonic model fitting the uplift pattern of mainland terraces to account for the similar elevations not only along the margin but also across the margin out to 70 nautical miles offshore.