Crucial role of water-present melting in metagranite: Implications for the instigation of crustal-scale shear zones

Abstract

Abstract Where, when, and why large-scale shear zones nucleate and propagate into the continental lithosphere are critical issues that challenge the research in tectonics. The East Variscan shear zone is one of the crustal-scale strike-slip faults that shaped the Variscan orogenic crust during late Carboniferous time. Field-based structural analysis and petrological observations demonstrate that suprasolidus high-strain deformation zones and metagranite occurrences are spatially correlated. Among the three dominant lithologies forming this orogenic middle crust (metapelite, metagraywacke, and metagranite), petrological observations and phase equilibrium modeling indicate that the latter is the first lithology that melts during collision-induced heating, in response to H2O-fluid-saturated melting. Our field data and modeling suggest that the water-fluxed melting of metagranite has a primary rheological control on the localization, instigation, and growth of crustal-scale shear zones in the middle crust. Thus, the distribution and geometry of metagranite at the crustal scale could be regarded as critical parameters influencing the rheological inheritance governing the tectonic evolution and localization of bulk strain in the continental lithosphere.