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Rift Systems in the Western United States

  • Conference paper
Tectonics and Geophysics of Continental Rifts

Part of the book series: NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series ((ASIC,volume 37))

Abstract

Rifting has occurred episodically in the western United States from the Precambrian to the Cenozoic. Speculation concerning Precambrian rifting has focused on the possibility of major continental rifts about 1,450 m.y002E; and 900? to 650 m.y. ago. The 1,450 m.y. rifting event is seen as cutting across trends of Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. It is considered to have developed along a system of three-armed rifts in which the abandoned arm is preserved as deep epicratonic troughs (aulacogens) extending into the craton at a high angle to the trend of the main rift. The Belt Supergroup, which is locally as much as 20 km thick, was deposited, according to this theory, in one of these abandoned arms.

The 900?- to 650-m.y. rifting event is considered to be related to a major change in the tectonic setting of the western United States that occurred after the deposition of the Belt Supergroup and related rocks. This change is marked locally by voluminous eruptions of mafic lava, in part tholeiitic basalt, and the subsequent development of a well-defined miogeocline appear to decrease exponentially, perhaps as a result of the cooling and thermal contraction that followed initial heating and uplift of the lithosphere at the time of rifting.

During the late Cenozoic, extensional faulting produced one of the world’s most widespread regions of continental rifting that extends from the United States southward into northern Mexico, a distance of 1,500 km. The region is as much as 800 km wide in the Basing and Range province in Nevada and Utah in the United States and is characterized by a system of basins and ranges formed by block faulting. Most estimates of the amount of extension range from 10 to 35 percent of the original width of the basin and range region. Widespread seismic activity, thin crust, low upper-mantle seismic velocities, and high-heat flow are characteristic of the region of extension. Current theories relate extension to one of the folliwing: (1) oblique tensional fragmentation within a broad belt of right-lateral movement and distributed extension related to the development of the right-lateral San Andreas transform fault system, (2) upwelling from the mantle behind an active subduction zone (back-arc spreading), (3) subduction of the East Pacific Rise, or (4) mantle plumes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    John H. Stewart

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  1. John H. Stewart
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar B. Ramberg

  2. Mineralogical-Geological Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Else-Ragnhild Neumann

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© 1978 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Stewart, J.H. (1978). Rift Systems in the Western United States. In: Ramberg, I.B., Neumann, ER. (eds) Tectonics and Geophysics of Continental Rifts. NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series, vol 37. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9806-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9806-3_10

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