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New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal, V. 4, No. 2, www.ncgt.org

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ARTICLES Neotectonics of the Gulf Coast and active rifting and wrenching of the United States: A tale of broken plate tectonics? Ghulam Sarwar Independent Consultant, Houston, Texas, USA [email protected]

ABSTRACT: The North American craton has been through many orogenic cycles in the Phanerozoic. At present, eastern third of the United States is under compression from the Atlantic side, its western half is mostly under extension and/or wrench, and its southern Gulf Coast margin is under extension toward the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). The Gulf Coast extension is linked to Tertiary growth faults that extend into GOM basin that dates back to Early Mesozoic rifting between the North and South Americas. This rifting involved a multitude of NW and NE oriented faults along its north side, of which the NW-SE transfer faults seem to have been dominant and episodically active throughout the Mesozoic. Currently, they seem to be involved in wrench movements, in harmony with the rifting and wrenching of the continental interior and Mexico. The rifting and wrenching of the Gulf Coast and GOM are supported by studies involving surface geology, historic seismicity, gravity, bathymetry, and subsurface seismic and well data, over the decades by this writer and by numerous other workers. Whether conventional plate tectonics can explain the complex, geologically episodic and continent wide “intra-plate” on shore and GOM deformation - or do we have a tale of broken plate tectonics - is a pertinent question. Keywords: Neotectonics, U.S. Gulf Coast, rifting-wrenching (Received on 10 May 2016. Accepted on 23 May 2016)

Introduction The landmass of United States is composed of a collage of rock units ranging in age from Proterozoic to Holocene, during which time diverse orogenic cycles produced a number of basins that have been more or less unstable since their formation (Fig. 1). Its current crustal tectonic stress field has been described in terms of the reigning Plate Tectonic theory. According to Zoback and Zoback (1981 and 1989), most of the eastern and central United States is characterized by NE-ENE oriented maximum horizontal compression (Fig. 2A) that coincides with absolute plate motion and ridge push direction of North America - from the Atlantic. Drag at the base of North American plate may be a secondary but weak contributing factor to stress (Zoback and Zoback, 1989).

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Fig. 1. Precambrian basins in the eastern half of USA. OA: Ouachita Aulacogen; RCG: Rough Creek Graben; RFR: Reelfoot Rift; RT: Rome Trough; BT: Birmingham Trough; OB: Olin Basin; FWR: Fort Wayne Rift; ECRB: East Continent Rift Basin; LPCM: Late Paleozoic continental margin. Current seismic activity in many of these rifts, such as the Ouachita Aulacogen, the Reelfoot Rift and the Birmingham Trough raises questions about the stability of the Gulf Coast (Credit: Kentucky Geological Survey, 2000).

The western United States is characterized by extensional tectonics - with the exception of Pacific northwest and the San Andreas region that are ruled by NE compression from the subducting Juan de Fuca plate on the Pacific and strike-slip, respectively (Fig. 2A; Zoback and Zoback, 1989). This widespread Cordilleran ENE-WSW extension rules the Basin and Range province and Rio Grande Rift. The intervening Colorado Plateau is part of this extensional domain but it has been uplifted as a large coherent crustal block since the Oligocene.


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Fig. 2A. Generalized stress map for the continental United States. Outward pointing arrows characterize areas going through extensional deformation and inward pointing arrows are shown for regions dominated by compressional tectonism (thrust and strike slip faulting). Stress provinces are delineated by thick dashed lines. CC: Cascade convergence province; PNWE: Pacific Northwest; SDA: San Andreas province; CP: Colorado Plateau interior; SGP: Southern Great Plains (after Zoback and Zoback, 1981 and 1989).

Before the development of the San Andreas transform fault (post 30 Ma), the Farallon Plate is believed to have subducted under the west coast of United States (and Central and South America) in the Early Cenozoic. This has been related to the onset of Basin and Range extension (Atwater, 1970; Atwater and Molnar, 1973; Engebretson et al., 1985; see Parsons, 2006, and references therein). Since the Basin and range province lies far to the east of this subduction zone, very low angle subduction was contrived to explain rifting in a back arc type of setting. Remnants of Farallon plate, named Juan de Fuca, Explorer, Gorda, Cocos and Nazca plates, are still believed to be subducting along the west coast of Americas, as the Pacific plate slides by northward along the San Andreas Fault (Fig. 2B). Fig. 2B: Generalized plate tectonic framework for the western United States. Note the right lateral San Andreas fault zone and Juan de Fuca subduction zone off the northwestern coast (Credit USGS).

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The southern Gulf Coast region of United States is different from all of the above as it is being subjected to southward extension, under the influence of coast parallel Tertiary and Quaternary growth faults, toward the Gulf of Mexico (GOM, Fig. 2A). This follows the birth and evolution of the Gulf during Early Mesozoic rifting of the supercontinent Pangaea (Pilger, 1981). Reed (1995) argued that rifting in the GOM had occurred since the Cretaceous. Zimmerman (1995) discussed wrench movements in north central Gulf Coast that affected Mesozoic and Tertiary strata, much of it in Louisiana. This paper is based on the writer’s observations over the last three decades that suggest that the Gulf Coast margin of United States is perhaps not the passive margin that it is supposed to be in the plate tectonic jargon (Sarwar, 2002 and 2003). Instead, the Gulf Coast seems to have been active in the sense that it has been through episodic deformation that continues to this day and extends into the GOM. Thus the use of term ‘active’ here is in tectonic sense and different from plate tectonic implications. Does conventional plate tectonics explain any of the above movements or are the geologically persistent and episodic “intra-plate” movements and coastal deformation telling a different story - perhaps of broken plate tectonics? Historic Perspective The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) began life as a rift basin that was formed during the Triassic-Jurassic separation of North America from South America (Pilger, 1981; Buffler and Sawyer, 1985; Salvador, 1987). Evaporite deposition occurred during the Early-Middle Jurassic rifting and was followed by sea floor spreading during the Late Jurassic, creating a strip of salt free oceanic crust (Salvador, 1987; Buffler, 1991). The oceanic crust separated deep water Louann salt from shallow water southern Campeche basin salt (John Dribus, personal communication, 2016). The basin cooled and subsided during the Cretaceous, accommodating carbonate platforms. Clastic deposition, resulting from hinterland uplift has dominated the Cenozoic. The Mississippi River became the dominant factor west of Florida. The extended basin was divided into blocks with varying basement properties. Tectonic boundaries of these blocks were marked by transfer faults that had developed more or less perpendicular to the direction of oceanic spreading (Lister et al., 1986). It is now generally seen that the northern Gulf rift basin is right laterally segmented by a series of NW- SE trending transfer faults (Figs 3A, 7 and 9; Adams,1997; Huh et al., 1996; Stephens, 2010). However, recent basin wide satellite gravity data are interpreted to show that that the GOM basin opened in the Early Jurassic in the north and in the Late Jurassic in the south. As shown, the Late Jurassic oceanic spreading seems to have taken place along a highly arcuate ridge system, convex to the north, with transform faults swinging from a NNE orientation along the Mexican margin to NE toward Florida (Fig. 3B, Sandwell, et al., 2014; Mann, 2016). Therefore, the question arises how does the NW-SE oriented set of transfer faults fit into the newly emerged satellite gravity map pattern? Did the NW-SE oriented transfer faults (Fig. 3A) really develop under a dynamic regime different from the (younger?) oceanic crust, and if so, how?


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Figure 3A. Selected structural features of the northern Gulf of Mexico Basin. Blue areas are covered by allochthonous salt. Curved orange lines are normal faults. Gray areas are basement uplifts or arches. Northwest lines are named transfer faults. Red line marks the Lower Cretaceous shelf edge (LK). See text for discussion (from Stephens, 2009).

Regardless of their orientation and how they fit together, all GOM transfer faults have been generally regarded as little more than tectonically inactive remnants on a passive margin. The post rifting tectonics of the GOM are largely described in terms of growth faulting related to prograded Tertiary deltas, salt tectonics – and, lately, folding and thrusting along the mobile Sigsbee Nappe, and on the lower slope and rise (Lee and George, 2004; Fiduk et al., 1999; Weimer and Buffler, 1992). The fact that the GOM area is attached to the very active tectonic domains of the Caribbean, Mexico, and western North America (Fig. 9; Le Roy and Rangin, 2008; Le Roy, et al., 2008; Martinez-Reyez, 2005), or has shared history (James, 2013) is overlooked. A cursory look at the tectonics of some areas of the American continental interior, Mexico and Caribbean, shows that the tectonic control and episodic activity along transfer faults (and other faults) dates back to Mesozoic. Let us take a glancing look at some areas in and around Louisiana and the GOM.

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Fig. 3B. Basin wide satellite gravity map for the Gulf of Mexico. Note the jagged ridgetransform imprint on the map and red and yellow lines on map b. COB: Continental crust – oceanic crust boundary. Note the curved, north to the northeasterly trend for the transform faults, from west to east. (credit: Dr. David Sandwell, Scripps Institute, California)

Historic tectonic and transfer fault activity North of Louisiana, the NW-SE trend of the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas, and, on the west, the courses of Sabine and Brazos Rivers in Texas, seem to have been controlled by transfer faults, some of which showing Tertiary and Holocene movements (see Cox et al., 2000). Quaternary and Holocene movements have been noted by several workers in the continental interior (Fisk, 1944). Examples are the Kentucky River fault system (Vanarsdale, 1986), the New Madrid seismic zone in the Reel Foot Rift (Braille et al., 1986), Arkansas, and the Meers fault, Oklahoma (Ramelli and Slemmons, 1990). Wrench faults and flower structures described from the vast area (Bolden, 2001) between Dallas and the Big Bend Park in Texas, may also be in part of Holocene origin. River trends in Louisiana seem to be controlled by transfer faults. A striking example is the NW-SE course of the Red River system, which lines up exactly with the Mississippi Canyon offshore – the course of both perhaps controlled by a major transfer fault (Fig. 4). The hot springs of Hot Wells, located west south west of Alexandria, Louisiana, seem to be related to the same fault. If the Monroe uplift, that became a carbonate bank after late Cretaceous volcanism, shows currently active thrust faults (Washington, 2001), the Red


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River fault is probably also active (Figs. 3A and 4).

Fig. 4. The Red River Transform Fault controls the northwest course of the river that crosses Louisiana in a diagonal fashion and joins the Mississippi River on the north side of the Atchafalaya basin (AFB). The fault also lines up with the offshore Mississippi Canyon that funnels a tremendous amount of river sediment to the deep Gulf. The Sabine Transfer Fault is a special NW oriented fault that shows bathymetric expression. As shown in Fig. 3A, there is a multitude of other transfer faults running parallel to the two shown here. See text for discussion and also Figs. 6 and 7 (Map base from Google).

The NW-SE Pearl River transfer fault (Fig. 3A), of southeastern Louisiana, controls the course of the river that seems to be constantly adjusting to ongoing tectonic unrest. The Pearl River fault also underpins the EW Greater Baton Rouge fault zone that extends into Baton Rouge, capital of Louisiana. On seismic profiles, in Lake Pontchartrain area, it is seen as a vertical fault zone that cuts through Neogene sedimentary ‘cut and fill’ structures and branches up to the mud line. A tremendous amount of allochthonous salt is caught up in the wrench and rift system along the Gulf Coast (Fig. 3A). It dominates and masks wrench movements to such an extent that entire structures are frequently interpreted only in terms of salt tectonics, without any consideration of basement-rooted vertical or lateral faulting (for example see Simmons, 1992, and Jackson et al., 2010 and references therein). Post-rift, thin-skinned tectonics of the GOM such as growth faulting, salt movement and gravity tectonics are generally seen to be thin-skinned and not related to the basement below the Jurassic Louann Salt. However, as mentioned above, the tectonics of the continental interior and historic seismicity of the GOM reveal that this entire region is active, and, along with the surrounding areas, has been episodically active since the Mesozoic. Also, some of the more recent deep hypocenters on the Gulf Coast and GOM apparently represent basement deformation below the Louann Salt (Fig. 5). Therefore, deep transfer faults

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cutting the basement below the Louann Salt may be an important contributing factor (see figure 5 in Stephens, 2009 also).

Fig. 5. Example of deep earthquakes (M2 – 6) in the Gulf of Mexico and northern Gulf Coast. All hypocenters shown are believed to be in the basement below the Jurassic Louann Salt level.

Aeromagnetic and gravity anomalies on the Gulf Coast and GOM shelf show NW-SE alignment along the transfer faults. In South Louisiana, these NW-SE lineaments cut through Miocene-Pliocene clastic sedimentary rocks. They also laterally offset (wrench) ENE trending gravity highs and lows that follow the half grabens and horsts of the buried rift margin (Fig. 6), which control the general east west strike of Tertiary growth faults.


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Fig. 6. Filtered Bouger gravity – 20,000 feet to 600,000 feet band pass. Note wrench offsets of ENE structural trends in south Louisiana where the transfer faults cut through the Miocene – Pliocene clastic sedimentary rocks and influence Recent drainage pattern and sediment distribution.

Offshore Activity There are many offshore examples to wrench displacement: In the West Cameron area along the LouisianaTexas border, Holocene clastics (MMS, 1986) piled up on the east side of the Sabine transfer fault, indicate more accommodation space on this side. Also, in the same area, bathymetric rollover folds on the Texas side, oriented parallel to the shoreline, become en echelon and offset to the south, as they cross the Sabine transfer fault (Fig. 7). Both the Holocene clastic pileup and the southward en echelon shift of the fold axes occur in the vicinity of the Sabine transfer fault. In the southern part of South Marsh Island area, on proprietary 3D seismic data, this writer had seen flower structures branching from great depths (11000 13500 meters) up to the mud line. Subsurface vertical and lateral offsets of Miocene growth faults of up to 4500 feet (1372 meters) are evident. The wrench system responsible for that would be related to the Sabine transfer fault. Flower structures have also been noted on seismic data under the Bird Foot Delta of the Mississippi River, and in many other places in the GOM area. Such seismic data remains unpublished due to proprietary rights.

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Fig. 7. The Sabine Transfer Fault - named after the Sabine River at the Texas-Louisiana border - trends northwest. Bathymetric fold axes (thick lines with arrows showing plunge) seem to be offset southward as they cross the Sabine Fault from the west. Also, Holocene clastic deposits seem to form a lobe (MMS, 1986) along the east side of the fault. Flower structures were noted on seismic data further offshore along this fault. Prolific TCF type gas production in the vicinity, in numerous pay sands stacked over thousands of feet, also points to a deep plumbing network. See text for further discussion.

In the Keathley Canyon area of the deep GOM (Fig. 4) fold axes above salt are oriented parallel to the adjacent transfer fault (Galveston transfer fault?). This has been interpreted as due to the buttressing effect of the fault on mobile folds developed above thick salt east of the fault (Shinol, 2000). However, if the shape and orientation of the 70 miles long Keathley Canyon is influenced by the underlying transfer fault, some distortion of the folds near the fault may possibly be due to wrench movement. Mexican and Western Gulf Activity The thickness of salt on the two sides of the Brazos transfer fault (Fig. 3A; BT on Fig. 9) is very different (Huh et al., 1996), indicating control over deposition. According to Hudec et al., 2013, based on volume of allochthonous salt that moved south across the Sigsbee salt canopy (Fig. 4), much more salt was present on the east side of Brazos fault than on its west side. The Brazos fault seems to have been reactivated in the Cenozoic when it defined the eastern limit of the Miocene Perdido fold belt, located on its west side (Hudec et al., 2013). Brazos and Galveston transfer faults, when extended offshore, seem to roughly line up with the NW oriented Keathley and Alaminos Canyons (Fig. 4). Based on extensive fieldwork and seismic data, Martinez-Reyes et al. (2005) concluded that the 900 kilometers long Rio Grande fault, that shows mid-Tertiary (Oligocene) left-lateral movements, extends offshore into the northwestern GOM. The fault controls the course of Rio Grande and extends northward along the active Rio Grande rift to the southern end of Colorado Plateau. This active rift shows multiple episodes of basaltic volcanic activity in the Neogene and younger. Besides the above, evidence for long range episodic deformation of North America, also comes from the widespread distribution of older volcanics and clastics in and around the Gulf - such as the Cretaceous volcanics of the Monroe uplift in Louisiana, Jackson Dome in Mississippi (Figs. 4 and 8) – and in Tertiary sequence of the northern Gulf Coast.


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Fig. 8. Bouger gravity, historic seismicity (USGS data from 1600’s to 2009) and neo-tectonics (schematic pink line faults). This map gives an idea of the unrest in the eastern two thirds of United States. The Reel Foot Rift and the Ouachita Aulacogen (in Oklahoma) are among the most active and dangerous seismic zones in the country. What is behind this wide spread ‘intra-plate’ unrest? LL: Llano Uplift, M: Monroe Uplift, S: Sabine Uplift. W: Wiggins Arch.

Rangin et al. (2008), on the basis of high resolution deep (11 seconds two way travel time) 2D seismic data, presented convincing evidence for deep crustal extension and rifting in the western GOM that enhanced shallower thin-skinned growth faulting. Their hypothesis was supported by a significant heat flow anomaly associated with faults and crustal thinning - independently deduced from gravity data. Le Roy and Rangin (2008) and Le Roy et al. (2008) also studied extensive 2D seismic data, deep exploration wells and gravimetric data, and made similar observations for the Burgos basin (NE Mexico) and its extension in the northwestern GOM. They argued that deep episodic Cenozoic crustal deformation resulted in wrenching and rifting along the Rio Bravo sinistral wrench zone (part of the Texas Lineament), offshore Corsair fault and other growth faults of the vast coastal plain of Mexico bordering the GOM (Fig. 9). Looking at the present day mega-tectonic framework of the western United States, it appears that the right lateral trans-tensional domain (Fig. 9) is probably in control. Via the right lateral segmentation of the GOM, described above, it links Unites States, Mexico and the Caribbean domains.

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Fig. 9. Schematic tectonic map of the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico and North American region showing structural trends. A: Atlanta, BT: Brazos Transfer Fault, BDF and BTF: Probable budding transform faults, CR: Caribbean Regime, D: Dallas, FL: Florida Lineament, GT: Galveston Transform Fault, H: Houston, M: Monterey, MC: Mexico City, MT: Matagorda Transfer Fault, N: New Orleans, P: Phoenix, RGR: Rio Grande Rift, RRMT: Red River-Mississippi Canyon Transfer Fault, SF: San Andreas Fault, ST: Sabine Transfer Fault, T: Tampico. Letters E and C signify the up dip extension and down dip compression regime of the Gulf Coast. Large arrows symbolize the regional right lateral shear regime that probably dominates the current tectonics of the area. See text for further discussion. (Extracted and modified from the Pacific Basin Sheet of the Plate Tectonic Map of the Circum Pacific Region, published by the Circum Pacific Council for Energy and Mineral Resources, 1985; modified after Sarwar, 2002).

Conclusions It is clear that the landmasses of USA and that Mexico are active and the basement underlying the mobile sedimentary cover of the northern Gulf is also mobile, with the various transfer faults accommodating differential movements among large crustal blocks (Figs. 8 and 9). The Gulf Coast seems to be a “not so passive margin” at present, and has not been so for a long time. Rifting and wrenching has already progressed to volcanic activity in Neogene to Recent times in northern Mexico, Texas, New Mexico (Fig. 8) and as far north as the American northwest. The transfer faults of the Gulf Coast, Mexico and GOM seem to be active and probably have been episodically active since the Mesozoic rifting. If so, we need to change the plate tectonic paradigm that fails to adequately explain the current seismicity and active tectonics of the North American interior, Mexico and the GOM (Figs. 8, 9 and 10; Hand, 2015). How can intra-plate and continent wide deformation result from abstractions such as “low angle subduction, ridge push, slab pull, mantle convection, or deep seated candle like plumes?


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Fig. 10. New seismic hazard map, released by the USGS on April 23, 2015, highlights earthquake risk zones (red to brown with highest risk) that indicates areas with induced or human-caused quakes (blue boxes on map; Hand, 2015). In north Texas and adjacent Oklahoma, much of the recent and ongoing seismicity has been linked to the tight shale production boom, involving multiple “fracking” and reinjection of produced water under pressure. Manmade seismicity, therefore, is only a relatively modern phenomenon. Note smaller hot spots along the east coast as well.

Remember, the so-called “intra-plate” movements are not just confined to North America, but are also common in South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe and even within the great oceanic regimes. The conventional plate tectonic theory seems to be at a loss to explain a lot of active deformation around the planet and simply relies on model-driven thinking devoid of convincing factual data. The GOM forms an active tectonic link between the Caribbean to the SSE and Mexico and western North America to the WNW. Basement involved wrenching of the Gulf Coast is real and constitutes a hither to ignored factor contributing to coastal subsidence and land loss along the Gulf Coast (Sarwar and Bohlinger, 2005; Dokka, 2006; Gagliano, 2008; Stephens, 2010). Acknowledgements: The author is thankful to several geoscientists at various oil companies or at meetings with whom he had the chance to discuss regional geology of Gulf of Mexico and surrounding areas over the decades. Brian Lock, Dave Meloy, Bruce Reitz, Gunnar Holmes and Doug Robbins exchanged views about regional geology. Joe Cross and Tim Flanagan were very helpful with data collection and processing of publically available gravity data. Special thanks are due to Dong Choi for his editorial advice and Keith James for his constructive review and linguistic improvements.

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