Geol

345 (Spring 2014)

Lecture 25

Foliations and Cleavage

Ch. 12, p. 243-256

1. Fabric and Foliation: Deformed rocks may contain aligned elongate minerals (a lineation) or aligned platy or
tabular minerals or components (a foliation). Both of these are types of rock fabric and are penetrative (found
throughout the rock volume).

Fabrics may form without deformation (primary fabrics) through sedimentation or crystallization. Bedding and
magmatic layering are both examples of primary foliations.

Tectonic fabrics involve deformation and form rocks called tectonites. Where platy minerals are caused to align,
these are secondary foliations or tectonic foliations (caused by stress).

[Fig. 12.1. Two types of fabrics caused by deformation. Top: lineations of aligned minerals. Bottom: foliation of
platy minerals]


2. Fabric and Foliation: Tectonic foliations are cohesive (do not fall apart) but may create planar zones of
weakness along which fracturing may occur. Examples include cleavage, schistosity, gneissosity, and mylonitic
foliations.

[Fig. 12.2. Different types of tectonic foliation] [Box 12.1. Fractures along existing cleavage]


3. Formation of Tectonic Foliations: Compaction of sedimentary rocks may first form a horizontal compaction
cleavage, sometimes made of stylolites. Horizontal shortening then forms a second high-angle cleavage that breaks
the rock into pencil-shaped fragments (hence, pencil cleavage).

Further contraction forms a slaty cleavage, which dominates the rock. With burial, growth of new phyllosilicate
minerals forms a phyllitic cleavage and ultimately a schistosity.

[Fig. 12.5. Theoretical cleavage development in mudstone] [Fig. 12.6. Pencil cleavage in mudstone] [Fig. 12.8.
Phyllitic cleavage in lower greenschist facies; (b) schistosity developing in upper greenschist facies]


4. Crenulation Cleavage: Changes in stress orientation through time may cause an early cleavage (called S1) to be
deformed (folded) or overprinted by a later cleavage, S2, resulting in crenulation cleavage.

[Fig. 12.9. Crenulation cleavage in mylonite] [Fig. 12.10. Crenulation cleavage in phyllite]


5. Axial Plane Cleavage: Folding may result in a foliation parallel to the axial surface and is called axial plane
cleavage. This may vary within individual layers depending on local strain conditions. The cleavage is a good
indicator of the strain ellipse.

[Fig. 12.11. Axial plane cleavage in Norway] [Fig. 12.17. Relationship between axial plane cleavage and the strain
ellipse for (a) pure shear and (b) simple shear]

Geol 345 (Spring 2014)

Lecture 25

Lineations

Ch. 13, p. 259-265

7. Lineations: Lineations are caused by aligned features that are very long in one dimension relative to the other
two.

Tectonic lineations may involve strained minerals or grains (pebbles) or lines of intersection between two fabrics.

Three types of lineations:

1. Penetrative: a linear fabric throughout the rock volume.
2. Surface: only occur on a planar surface (e.g., slickenlines on a fault plane).
3. Geometric: non-physical lineation e.g., fold axes; intersection of two foliations.

[Fig. 13.1. Lineation in gneiss]


8. Penetrative Lineations: Penetrative lineations are caused where rod-like minerals are produced by
recrystallization, cataclasis, or pressure solution. Initially spherical objects may be deformed into ellipsoids that are
very elongate, forming stretching lineations.

[Fig. 13.2. Mineral lineation caused by stretching of individual mineral grains]


9. Penetrative Lineations: Penetrative lineations may also result from intersection lineations (L1) between primary
layers (S0) and a foliation (S1), or between two foliations (S1 and S2). Small-scale crenulation foliations may
produce visible lineations along the fold axes.

[Fig. 13.3. Intersection lineations between beds and an axial plane foliation] [Figure. Measuring fold axis lineations
within a crenulation foliation in Lovell Wash, near Lake Mead, NV]


10. Penetrative Lineations: Penetrative lineations are also produced by boudinage, where a competent layer is
stretched to the point that it separates into parallel, sausage-shaped parts called boudins.


[Fig. 13.4. Pinch-and-swell structures (boudins)] [Fig. 13.5. Boudinage in a stretched fold limb]


11. Surface Lineations: Surface lineations are common on polished fault surfaces (slickensides), where linear
striations called grooves or slickenlines may be abraded into the surface. The growth of minerals during sliding may
also produce slickenlines via a fiber lineation.

[Fig. 13.9. Slickenlines produced by fiber lineations] [Fig. 13.10. Slickenlines on a normal fault, Norway] [Fig. 13.11.
Grooves along the Moab fault, Utah]


12. Surface Lineations: Surface lineations can also be defined by geometric striae, caused by the corrugated nature
of slip surfaces, typically oriented parallel to the slip direction.

[Fig. 13.12. Geometric striae along a deformation band fault, Utah]