Tectonic evolution of the southern Gawler Craton,South Australia, from electromagnetic sounding

Abstract

Long-period natural-source electromagnetic data have been recorded using portable three-component magnetometers at 39 sites in 1998 and 2002 across the southern Eyre Peninsula, South Australia that forms part of the Gawler Craton. Site spacing was of order 5 km, but reduced to 1 km or less near known geological boundaries, with a total survey length of approximately 50 km. A profile trending east – west was inverted for a 2D electrical resistivity model to a depth of 20 km across the southern Eyre Peninsula. The main features from the models are: (i) on the eastern side of the Gawler Craton, the Donington Suite granitoids to the east of the Kalinjala Shear Zone are resistive (>1000 Ωm); (ii) the boundary between the Donington Suite granitoids and the Archaean Sleaford Complex, which has much lower resistivity of 10 – 100 Ωm, is almost vertical in the top 10 km and dips slightly westwards; and (iii) two very low resistivity (<1 Ωm) arcuate zones in the top 3 km of Hutchison Group sediments correlate with banded iron-formations, and are probably related to biogenic-origin graphite deposits concentrated in fold hinges. Such features suggest an extensional regime during the time period 2.00 – 1.85 Ga. We suggest that the resistivity boundary between the Donington Suite and the Archaean Sleaford Complex represents a growth fault, typical for rift systems that evolve into a half-graben structure. In the graben basin, low-resistivity shallow-marine Hutchison Group sediments were deposited. Folding of the sediments during the Kimban Orogeny between 1.74 and 1.70 Ga has led to migration of graphite to the fold hinges resulting in linear zones of very low resistivity that correlate with banded iron-formation magnetic anomalies.