Drainage network rearrangement during the formation and segmentation of a Paleogene intraplate half-graben: Insights from fluvial captures records and longitudinal profiles

Abstract

Rivers play an important role in modifying landscapes through denudation processes, which can be influenced by changes in tectonics, climate and eustasy, causing erosive pulses and river capture events that alter the geometry and topology of the drainage network. Therefore, drainage networks are not static features over time and are modified and rearranged by shifts in their boundary conditions until a state of dynamic equilibrium is reached in the landscape. The region of the Paraíba do Sul Middle Valley (PSMV), in Southeastern Brazil, has important records of captures and recent drainage rearrangements, which show a state of transition in the landscape and, consequently, the reorganization of drainage networks. This region is in the central segment of the Continental Rift of Southeastern Brazil (CRSB), a prominent tectonic feature that can be described as an intraplate half-graben. While fluvial profiles and fluvial gradient indices are valuable tools for studying the landscape evolution, their application to investigate the erosive power of rivers and how the topography of a half-graben affects the rearrangement of the drainage network over geological time is still limited. Specifically, there is a need to explore how the topography of the active border of a half-graben differs from that of the flexural border in terms of river network organization and fluvial erosion patterns. This study aims to characterize the different stages of rearrangements of the drainage network and their relation with the events of formation and segmentation of a half-graben. A total of 21 basins were analyzed in both Fault and Flexural Border sectors, extracting geomorphic parameters, such as slope, drainage area, concavity, χ and ksn. A more specific study was carried out in areas where river captures were recognized as been related to the half-graben formation and segmentation events. The ksn calculated for the main rivers demonstrates that the formation of the rift and its consequent configuration in half-graben granted a greater erosive power for the basins that drained the active fault of the rift, represented by the basins of the Fault Border Sector of the study area. The tectonic events registers in the fluvial system were analyzed using the χ method and the main migration tendency of the dividers was extracted from the difference in the values of this parameter in areas close to the interfluves. With this, it becomes evident that the geometric configuration imposed in the half-graben establishes, from the beginning of the rift phase, an important control on the erosion potential of the rivers located in the active and flexural borders. This control resulted in ancient river captures, currently exposed as inflections in the main river channels towards the local depocenters, thus demonstrating that this type of tectonic event can generate disturbances in the river system that can be observed even today, tens of millions of years after it happened.