Late Quaternary left-lateral strike slip rate along the Anninghe-Zemuhe
Section of the Xianshuihe-Xiaojiang Fault System and its implication to
the clockwise block rotation of the SE margin of the Tibetan Plateau
Abstract
Crustal material eastward extrusion from the Tibetan Plateau is closely
related to the strike-slip faults in the SE margin of the Tibetan
Plateau. The left-lateral strike-slip Xianshuihe–Xiaojiang fault system
(XXFS) is the most active and the largest-scale one. The slip rates
along the XXFS is crucial for unraveling the kinematics of the SE margin
of the Tibetan Plateau. The central section of the XXFS, also known as
the Anninghe–Zemuhe section, was poorly researched owing to its
inaccessibility, a lack of high-quality quantitative age data, as well
as questionable displacement determination and methodology. In this
study, we adopted high-resolution topographic data (terrestrial laser
scanning) and high-accuracy dating methods (OSL and 14C) to obtain more
reliable slip rates of Anninghe Fault and Zemuhe Fault. The late
Quaternary slip rates of Anninghe Fault and Zemuhe Fault were
constrained to be 6.9±0.6 mm/a and 11.2±0.4 mm/a, respectively. A large
of rate statistics was also conducted along the XXFS. We found that the
slip rate of the XXFS is in a narrow range of 12–15 mm/a (slightly
increasing from north to south) after taking the Daliangshan Fault into
account. Combined with the analysis of the relationship between the
active faults and block rotation, we proposed that the uniform
high-speed strike-slip along the XXFS largely constrains the clockwise
rotation of the SE margin of the Tibetan Plateau.