Geomorphic evidence for active faulting in the Altyn Tagh and northern Tibet and qualitative.pdf

Geomorphic evidence for active faulting in the Altyn Tagh and northern Tibet and qualitative estimates of its contribution to the convergence of India and Eurasia Peter Molnar, B. Clark Burchfiel Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Liang Kuangyi Institute of Geography, Academia Sinica, Urumqi, Xinjiang, Peoples Republic of China Zhao Ziyun Regional Geologic Surveying Team, Xinjiang Provincial Bureau of Geology, Qitai, Xinjiang, Peoples Republic of China ABSTRACT A brief traverse across the Altyn Tagh and Kunlun in northern Tibet revealed abundant evidence for recent crustal deformation there. From ridges offset roughly 10 m and from fresh mole tracks 40 cm or more high along the Altyn Tagh strike-slip fault, we conclude that a large earthquake occurred in the past few hundred years. Accord- ingly, the rate of slip could be relatively high (30 ±20 mm/yr?). Active reverse (or thrust) faults mark the bases of several mountain ranges in the Altyn Tagh and Kunlun where the neighboring basins lie at eleva- tions less than 4000 m. Therefore, roughly north-south crustal short- ening appears to be occurring there, probably at a rate of several millimetres per year. The crustal shortening accommodated by strike- slip and reverse (or thrust) faulting appears to account for a signifi- cant part (10%-25%) of Indias convergence with Eurasia. The broad zone of crustal shortening in northern Tibet indicates that the area! extent of the plateau is increasing northward by crustal thickening on its northern margin. INTRODUCTION The active deformation of central and eastern Asia includes a full spectrum of styles and orientations and is distributed over a vast area (Fig. 1), but most of this deformation seems, qualitatively, to be related to the convergence of India with reference to Eurasia (e.g., Molner and Tapponnier, 1975). Proving such a relation, however, requires