Structural evolution of Lake Superior I: Western basin
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
- Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, Palisades, NY (United States)
The authors have utilized reflector terminations, reflection character and truncation to interpret a grid of multi-channel seismic reflection profiles collected in the American waters of Lake Superior by Grant-Norpac in 1985. The authors have defined 13 separate reflectors that can be mapped across most of the basin, representing Keweenawan volcanics and sediments of the Jacobsville-Bayfield and Oronto Groups and possibly the early to mid Proterozoic Animikie Group. Structure and isopach maps reveal that the basin is segmented into a series of sub-basins divided by basement highs oblique to the trend of the Lake Superior basin. Unusual is the apparent rarity of extensional structures, which are confined entirely to the extreme western portion of the lake. Reactivation of basin bounding faults as thrusts has been invoked to explain uplift on the Isle Royale and Keweenaw faults. Gravity anomaly data has been interpreted to suggest that the Isle Royal fault is continuous with the Douglas fault in northeastern Wisconsin. The Isle Royale fault terminates west of Isle Royale on the flank of a large basement high. To the west of the termination, deformation is taken up on a blind or intra-stratal thrust which wraps around the basement high. The high is coincident with a distinctive gravity low. It is covered by the sag phase sediments of the Oronto and Jacobsville-Bayfield Groups. The intra-stratal thrust may root below the Keweenawan basalts, suggesting that the basalt section acted as a load bearing member, analogous to carbonate sequences in thrust slices, during the compressional reactivation of the rift structures.
- OSTI ID:
- 5578976
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-921058-; CODEN: GAAPBC
- Journal Information:
- Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States), Vol. 24:7; Conference: 1992 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Cincinnati, OH (United States), 26-29 Oct 1992; ISSN 0016-7592
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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