Cenozoic intracontinental deformation and exhumation at the northwestern tip of the India-Asia collision-southwestern Tian Shan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Along the Ghissar-Alai Range of the southwestern Tian Shan (southwestern Kyrgyzstan, northern Tajikistan), the deformation front of the India-Asia collision—the Pamir-Tibet orogen—is interacting with the intra-continental Tian Shan orogen without the intervening Tarim Craton. Apatite fission-track (n = 33, ~3.3–145.6 Ma, 27% <10 Ma) and (U-Th)/He (n = 32, ~1.9–26.1 Ma, 56% <10 Ma) thermochronologic ages suggest approximate isothermal holding (very slow cooling to weak reheating) during relative tectonic quiescence between ~150–15 Ma. Accelerated exhumation (~0.2–1.0 km/Myr, median ~0.5 km/Myr) and cooling (11–16 °C/Myr) occurred over the last ~10 Myr. Geomorphologic parameters—incision, and river steepness and concavity—confirm the youth of the southwestern Tian Shan's mountain building. High exhumation/cooling rates correlated with pronounced local relief, produced by Cenozoic faults reactivating inherited (Late Paleozoic) structures. Regions with similarly young exhumation are centered along rims of rigid crustal blocks in the central and eastern Tian Shan. Structurally, the Ghissar-Alai Range is a broad, ~east-trending zone of dextral transpression that includes the northern Tajik Basin (Illiak Fault Zone) and the Pamir Thrust System of the frontal northern Pamir. It is the particular deformation field at the northwestern tip of the India–Asia collision—the interaction of the westward gravitational collapse of the Pamir Plateau into the Tajik Basin with the bulk northward motion of the Pamir—that transformed the southwestern Tian Shan into a dextral transpression belt. The dextral transpression in the southwestern Tian Shan contrasts with sinistral strike-slip shear localized along inherited fault zones, accommodating dominant ~ north–south shortening, in the central and eastern Tian Shan. The deformation field influenced by the Pamir and the associated young exhumation make the Ghissar-Alai Range a unique feature in the Tian Shan orogen.