HR: 0800h
AN: T11D-1283    [Abstracts]
TI: The Channel Islands Thrust Fault, Southern California: Structure at the Juncture Between the Western Transverse Ranges and the Continental Borderland
AU: * Fisher, M A
EM: mfisher@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Rd, Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AU: Langenheim, V E
EM: zulanger@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Rd, Menlo Park, CA 94025 United States
AB: Potential-field data over the northern Channel Islands and Santa Barbara basin and seismic reflection data collected near these islands show the crustal structure near the tip of the Channel Island thrust fault. This fault dips north to underlie the Santa Barbara basin and is part of the regional fault system that separates the western Transverse Ranges from the California Continental Borderland. Our investigation focuses on Santa Cruz Island, where a local exposure of mainly Jurassic ophiolitic basement rocks includes the Willows Plutonic Complex. These mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks produce strong magnetic and gravity anomalies, showing that fragments of the Willows Plutonic Complex have been carried northwestward into or below the basin by sinistral translation of hanging-wall blocks in the thrust system. The potential-field anomalies indicate a cumulative left-lateral offset of about 20 km along what is probably the Santa Cruz Island fault. This fault is known from onshore trenching to be primarily a left-lateral strike-slip fault that was active during late Quaternary time. Seismic-reflection data show that where the Santa Cruz Island fault projects into the offshore a fault-bend fold deforms stratified rock in the Santa Barbara basin. Slip along this fault is partitioned into strike-slip and southwest-vergent reverse components. The Santa Cruz Island fault formed where structures of the California Borderland terminate to the northwest against the rocks that make up the northern Channel Islands. Structures developed at this termination may be similar to ones that formed where the Newport-Inglewood and the San Pedro Basin faults end to the northwest against the Santa Monica Mountains. These terminating faults pose a considerable earthquake hazard, and findings from the area of Santa Cruz Island may help elucidate this hazard.
DE: 7221 Paleoseismology
DE: 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
DE: 7230 Seismicity and seismotectonics
DE: 8107 Continental neotectonics
DE: 1200 GEODESY AND GRAVITY
SC: Tectonophysics [T]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting