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Magnetic fabrics indicating Late Quaternary seismicity in the Himalayan foothills

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Abstract

The anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) study was performed on soft sediment samples from a trenched fault zone across the Himalayan frontal thrust (HFT), western Himalaya. AMS orientation of K min axes in the trench sediments is consistent with lateral shortening revealed by geometry of deformed regional structures and recent earthquakes. Well-defined vertical magnetic foliation parallel to the flexure cleavage in which a vertical magnetic lineation is developed, high anisotropy, and triaxial ellipsoids suggest large overprinting of earthquake-related fabrics. The AMS data suggest a gradual variation from layer parallel shortening (LPS) at a distance from the fault trace to a simple shear fabric close to the fault trace. An abrupt change in the shortening direction (K min) from NE–SW to E–W suggests a juxtaposition of pre-existing layer parallel shortening fabric, and bending-related flexure associated with an earthquake. Hence the orientation pattern of magnetic susceptibility axes helps in identifying co-seismic structures in Late Holocene surface sediments.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Carlo Dietl, Dr. Helga de Wall, Prof. Wolf-Christian Dullo, and an anonymous reviewer for review comments that helped in revising the manuscript. The trench work was funded by NSF grant No. EAR 9972955 to S. G. Wesnousky. The authors wish to acknowledge Drs. B. R. Arora, P. Banerjee, V. Sriram and late Professor K. N. Khattri for helpful discussions. Rakesh Kumar assisted in the rock magnetic analysis and Samay Singh in X-ray diffractometry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, 248001, India

    R. Jayangondaperumal & Ashok Kumar Dubey

  2. Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, India

    B. Senthil Kumar

  3. Center for Neotectonic Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, 89577, USA

    S. G. Wesnousky

  4. Department of Geology, University of Pune, Pune, India

    S. J. Sangode

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  1. R. Jayangondaperumal
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  4. S. G. Wesnousky
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Correspondence to Ashok Kumar Dubey.

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Jayangondaperumal, R., Dubey, A.K., Senthil Kumar, B. et al. Magnetic fabrics indicating Late Quaternary seismicity in the Himalayan foothills. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 99 (Suppl 1), 265–278 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-009-0494-5

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