Synorogenic extension and extrusion in southern Taiwan

Highlights

• The obliquely colliding drives the warm/hot lower crust to the southwest.

• Normal faults accommodated the lateral and vertical movement of the lower crust.

• The southwest extrusion process may start younger the 0.5 Ma.

Abstract

Paleostress inversion of 141 outcrop-scale faults across the eastern flank of the southern Central Range of Taiwan where leveling and GPS data suggest a steep gradient in rock uplift rates yields two main kinematic phases of deformation. Phase 1 consists of 93 normal faults that generally dip moderately northeast whereas phase 2 consists of 48 strike-slip faults that generally dip steeply west-northwest. Both phases record NE-trending sub-horizontal extension but different orientations of principal shortening; in phase 1, the principal shortening axis is nearly vertical whereas in phase 2 it plunges gently to moderately southeast. The northeast extension is consistent with extension directions obtained from GPS and earthquake focal mechanisms in the central part of the southern Central Range. However, these indicators of contemporary deformation also reveal more complicated states of stress along the eastern and western flanks of the range and in the deep crust southwest of the range. We interpret these more complicated stress states as reflecting “forceful extrusion” of the southern Central Range where the lower crust is being pinched between more rigid crustal blocks represented by the Peikang High and the Luzon Arc. In this context, the temporal progress from strike-slip to normal faulting observed in outcrops may reflect the advection of the rocks from lower to higher structural levels. The northeast extension normal faults can be interpreted that accommodating the lateral and vertical movement of the crust in the southern Central Range. Based on thermochronological data and the onset of extrusion in southwest Taiwan in the late Pleistocene, we infer that this SW extrusion process may be younger the 0.5 Ma.