Kinematic indicators on active normal faults in Western Turkey

Abstract

Quaternary normal fault zones in western Turkey comprise multiple slip planes and zone-parallel layers of fault breccia. They also contain several little-known kinematic indicators that are probably typical of many formed at shallow levels in extending terrains. The recent exhumation by contractors of about 2000 m2 of slip planes in a SSE-dipping fault zone separating Quaternary colluvium from bedrock carbonates at Yavansu (7 km SE of Kuşadasi) permits an unusually complete inventory of the indicators to be compiled. The most spectacular indicators are metre-scale 69°W-pitching corrugations in slip planes and recemented breccia sheets underlying them. Corrugations, characterized by sinusoidal profiles normal to their long axes and, less commonly, culminations and depression along their axes possibly developed as a result of upwards-propagating slip planes seeking undemanding pathways through heterogeneous fault-precursor breccias that formed in advance of tip lines. Parallel to corrugation long axes are those of gutters, flat-floored, sleep-sided channels a few centimetres wide, probably related to the abrasion of subslip-plane breccia sheets. Centimetre-scale tool tracks scored in the uppermost subslip-plane breccia sheet by resistant colluvial clasts are irregular at their proximal ends but distally they swing into alignment with corrugation axes. Frictional-wear striae, centimetres long but only a few millimetres wide and pitching 78°W, are superimposed on the other slip-parallel lineations. Comb fractures nearly perpendicular to slip planes define an intersection lineation which is normal to corrugation axes. Fault-plane solutions of earthquakes on SSE-dipping active faults in the West Anatolian extensional province indicate that mainly normal, combined with minor dextral slip is the dominant mode, a conclusion in accord with the sense of slip inferred from the indicators exposed on the Yavansu slip planes.