Genetic relationship of rift-stage crustal structure, terrane accretion, and foreland tectonics along the southern Appalachian-Ouachita orogen

Abstract

Abrupt along-strike variations in tectonostratigraphic composition, internal structural style, and detachment level in the southern Appalachian and Ouachita foreland thrust belts are defined at a large-scale bend in strike and a truncation of Ouachita structures by the frontal Appalachian thrust fault. The along-strike variations correspond to differences in the pre-orogenic rifted Laurentian margin, in the history and nature of terrane accretion, and in the response of the foreland to these differences. Within the Ouachita embayment of the Laurentian margin, diachronous arc-continent collision migrated northwestward along a rift-stage transform margin from the Black Warrior foreland basin on the southeast in Late Mississippian time to a short-wavelength, high-amplitude foreland basin (Arkoma basin) on the northwest in front of the Ouachita thrust-belt salient in Early-Middle Pennsylvanian time. Off-shelf, deep-water strata of both passive-margin and synorogenic facies comprise an accretionary prism and subduction complex, and the Ouachita allochthon consists of mud-dominated thrust sheets that are internally disharmonic and folded. The allochthon of off-shelf strata was thrust over the passive-margin carbonate shelf, which remains in the Ouachita footwall. Along the southeast side of the Alabama promontory of the Laurentian margin, passive-margin shelf carbonates are imbricated in the Appalachian thrust belt, which is characterized by internally coherent thrust sheets and high-amplitude frontal ramps. The palinspastic extent of shelf-carbonate rocks corresponds to the extent of structurally shallow basement rocks on the upper-plate rift-stage margin of the Alabama promontory of Laurentian crust. Terranes accreted to the Laurentian margin during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies were driven over the shallow basement by continent-continent collision of Laurentia with Africa (Gondwana). Emplacement of the thrust-translated terranes tectonically stripped and replaced the shelf carbonate. The frontal thrust fault of the Appalachian thrust belt truncates the southeastern end of the slightly older frontal Ouachita thrust belt, as well as the southeastern part of the greater Black Warrior basin in the Ouachita foreland. Shallow basement beneath the Appalachian thrust belt extends cratonward beneath the low-amplitude Appalachian foreland basin.