Structural Model of the Basement in the Central Savannah River Area, South Carolina and Georgia

Abstract

Interpretation of several generations of seismic reflection data and potential field data suggests the presence of several crustal blocks within the basement beneath the Coastal Plain in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA). The seismic reflection and refraction data include a grid of profiles that capture shallow and deep reflection events and traverse the Savannah River Site and vicinity. Potential field data includes aeromagnetic, ground magnetic surveys, reconnaissance and detailed gravity surveys. Subsurface data from recovered core are used to constrain the model.Interpretation of these data characteristically indicate a southeast dipping basement surface with some minor highs and lows suggesting an erosional pre-Cretaceous unconformity. This surface is interrupted by several basement faults, most of which offset only early Cretaceous sedimentary horizons overlying the erosional surface. The oldest fault is perhaps late Paleozoic because it is truncated at the basement/Coastal Plain interface. This fault is related in timing and mechanism to the underlying Augusta fault. The youngest faults deform Coastal Plain sediments of at least Priabonian age (40-36.6 Ma). One of these young faults is the Pen Branch faults, identified as the southeast dipping master fault for the Triassic Dunbarton basin. All the Cenozoic faults are probably related in time and mechanism to the nearby, well studied Belair fault.The study area thus contains a set of structures evolved from the Alleghanian orogeny through Mesozoic extension to Cenozoic readjustment of the crust. There is a metamorphosed crystalline terrane with several reflector/fault packages, a reactivated Triassic basin, a mafic terrane separating the Dunbarton basin from the large South Georgia basin to the southeast, and an overprint of reverse faults, some reactivated, and some newly formed.