The Chukchi Borderland: a Sediment-starved Rifted Continental Margin
Abstract
The origin and geologic structure of the Chukchi Borderland region, approximately 650 by 400 km in size, has been the subject of speculation since the earliest ice island research groups discovered its existence more than 60 years ago. Multichannel seismic reflection and refraction data acquired between 2007 and 2011, together with legacy seismic data show fragments of high-standing basement (continental) horsts. The structure is draped with less than a kilometer of sediment. Between the high-standing blocks are deep grabens with locally tilted but mostly flat-lying deposits generally only 1-2 km thick. Northwind Escarpment, along the eastern boundary of the Borderland, is a 600-km-long fault adjacent to the deeply subsided and hyper-extended crust of the Canada Basin to the east. The long, linear, sub-parallel orientation of the major structures (including Northwind Escarpment) is consistent with transtensional deformation of the Borderland. The general paucity of thick sediments indicates a sediment-starved environment. Both the North Chukchi Basin on the west and an unnamed deeply buried valley east on the Beaufort margin provide sediment-routing conduits through which sediment by-passed the Borderland throughout much of the Cretaceous history of the growing Brooks Range to the south. Canada Basin deposits also show strata thicken towards the southwest, suggesting sediment influx via the deeply buried valley on the Beaufort margin. On the northeastern side of the Canada Basin, the region is underlain by horst and graben structures with orientations similar to the Chukchi Borderland, but the intervening valleys are filled with as much as two km of sediment and the entire feature is buried beneath another 2 km of post-rift sediment. The similarity of structural styles on both sides of the Canada Basin suggests that this style of transtensional rifting could have been widespread during the early extension of this part of the Arctic and perhaps the Chukchi Borderland and parts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago margin were conjugates prior to rifting. Seismic data also show that volcanism associated with the High-Arctic Large Igneous Province to the north has intruded or flowed over the northern parts of the Borderland. The Chukchi Borderland, because of its lack of sedimentary cover, offers a unique window into the early rifting history of the Canada Basin and the transition from rifted to hyper-extended continental crust.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMOS13B1701H
- Keywords:
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- 8105 TECTONOPHYSICS Continental margins: divergent;
- 3025 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS Marine seismics;
- 3045 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS Seafloor morphology;
- geology;
- and geophysics;
- 8169 TECTONOPHYSICS Sedimentary basin processes