Analysis of the Wallowa-Baker terrane boundary: Implications for tectonic accretion in the Blue Mountains province, northeastern Oregon

Abstract

The Baker terrane, exposed in the Blue Mountains province of northeastern Oregon, is a long-lived, ancient (late Paleozoic–early Mesozoic) accretionary complex with an associated forearc. This composite terrane lies between the partially coeval Wallowa and Olds Ferry island-arc terranes. The northern margin of the Baker terrane is a broad zone (>25 km wide) of fault-bounded, imbricated slabs and slices of meta-igneous and metasedimentary rocks faulted into chert-argillite melange of the Elkhorn Ridge Argillite. Metaplutonic rocks within tectonic units in this zone crystallized between 231 and 226 Ma and have low initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios (0.7033–0.7034) and positive initial e Nd values (+7.7 to +8.5). In contrast, siliceous argillites from the chert-argillite melange have initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values ranging from 0.7073 to 0.7094 and initial e Nd values between −4.7 and −7.8. We interpret this broad, imbricate fault zone as a fundamental tectonic boundary that separates the distal, Wallowa island-arc terrane from the Baker accretionary-complex terrane. We propose that this terrane boundary is an example of a broad zone of imbrication made up of slabs and slices of arc crust tectonically mixed within an accretionary complex, providing an on-land, ancient analogue to the actualistic arc-arc collisional zone developed along the margins of the Molucca Sea of the central equatorial Indo-Pacific region.