Tectonic shortening and crustal thickness in the Central Andes:
How good is the correlation?
Jonas Kley Geologisches Institut, Universität Karlsruhe, P.O. Box 6980, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany César R. Monaldi Universidad Nacional de Salta-Conicet, Buenos Aires 177, 4400 Salta, Argentina
ABSTRACT VARIATIONS IN FORELAND
Exceptional thickening of continental crust beneath the Central Andes is believed to be STRUCTURAL STYLE AND mainly a result of tectonic shortening of the South American plate in Neogene time. This MAGNITUDE OF SHORTENING shortening has been estimated to have contributed as much as 70%–80% of the present crustal ALONG STRIKE volume. A compilation of published shortening values and our own estimates based on balanced In the Andean segment considered here, the cross sections from the Central Andes between lat 3°S and 40°S suggest that 70%–80% is a foreland structural style is strongly heterogeneous maximum rather than an average value for this part of the Andes. Tectonic shortening and the (Figure 1A). From 3°S to 12°S, a salt-related, thin- crustal cross-section area are only loosely correlated. Variations in tectonic shortening are more skinned thrust belt is flanked on its external side by abrupt than those of crustal areas, particularly near the northern and southern ends of the several basement uplifts. From 12°S to 14°S, the Altiplano-Puna high plateau, where thick crust is associated with relatively small amounts of foreland belt consists of a narrow band of folds or shortening. Shortening there may account for no more than about 30% of the present crustal a foreland-dipping monocline (Ingeomin, 1975). cross-section area. The processes that created the remaining crustal area are not clear, but are South of 14°S, a wide, thin-skinned fold-and- likely to involve poorly constrained pre-Neogene tectonic shortening, moderate magmatic addi- thrust belt continues around the Arica bend to tions to the crust, tectonic underplating of material derived from the forearc, and possible flow 22°S, where it is replaced by the thick-skinned of ductile lower crust along strike. Santa Barbara thrust system, which at 27°S gives way to the Sierras Pampeanas basement uplifts. INTRODUCTION graphic data by assuming Airy isostatic equilib- Between 27° and 29°S, the Sierras Pampeanas The Central Andes are characterized by one rium (Isacks, 1988). border directly the Puna plateau, but from 29° to of the thickest continental crusts on Earth, 35°S there is a complex pattern of overlapping reaching a total thickness of as much as 70 km GEOLOGIC FRAMEWORK thin-skinned and thick-skinned structures to the and possibly more (Wigger et al., 1994; Zandt The Central Andes between lat 3° and 40°S are west of the Sierras Pampeanas (Mpodozis and et al., 1994). The deep crustal root is reflected in about 4500 km long and as wide as 700 km. In the Ramos, 1989). These include thin-skinned thrust high topography, particularly in the large Arica bend near 18°S, the mountain belt changes belts in the Argentinian Precordillera and the Altiplano-Puna plateau, which is about 4 km strike from northwest to north. Figure 1A shows Aconcagua belt, and an intervening basement up- above sea level. Thickening of the Andean crust the main morphological units east of the mag- lift, the Frontal Cordillera. At 35°S, the Aconcagua is believed to result mostly from tectonic short- matic arc. The Andean orogen can be subdivided belt merges with the thick-skinned Malargüe and ening of the South American plate in Neogene into eastern thrust belts and a less-deformed Neuquén fold belts (Ramos et al., 1996). time (Sempere et al., 1990; Sheffels, 1990). hinterland. The thrust belts consists of topograph- The variations in structural style and width of Tertiary deformation appears to have migrated ically higher central belts and foreland belts of the deformed zone suggest corresponding varia- from the west-central parts of the Andes toward varying width. Central belts comprise most of the tions in the magnitude of contraction. Quanti- the eastern foreland. Late Neogene deformation Eastern Cordillera, parts of the Puna plateau, and tative estimates of the latter, mostly based on is concentrated in thrust belts along the east the Principal Cordillera. The foreland belts in- cross-section balancing, are available for part of flank of the Andes. Near-surface shortening clude, from north to south, the Subandean Ranges the region, in particular for the thrust belts; only may be accommodated at depth by crustal-scale (Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina), the Sierras a few include the hinterland. We have supple- thrusting (Allmendinger and Zapata, 1996; Pampeanas, the Argentinian Precordillera, the mented the published data with our own esti- Okaya et al., 1997; Schmitz, 1994). Attempts to Frontal Cordillera, and the Malargüe-Neuquén mates for areas where the coverage is poor, draw- quantify the contribution of tectonic shortening fold belts. The central belts are predominantly ing on published geological-structural data (Figure to overall crustal thickening have given reason- composed of Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks 1B, Table 1). From the western or southwestern ably consistent results, suggesting that the that were deformed in several pre-Cretaceous oro- ends of individual cross sections, lines were pro- amount of crustal shortening recorded in near- genic events of local to regional extent, which jected perpendicular to the regional strike of surface structures could account for as much as range in age from mid-Cambrian to post-Permian. structures until they intersected with a line of ref- 70%–80% of the observed crustal volume The foreland belts consist of essentially con- erence running parallel to the trench. In the vicin- (Roeder, 1988; Schmitz, 1994; Sheffels, 1990). formable early Paleozoic to Neogene successions. ity of the Arica bend, the projected lines were not These estimates were made for transects across Crystalline basement is only exposed in the Sierras drawn perpendicular to the regional structural the Central Andes that included well-developed Pampeanas, but has been inferred to be involved trend but parallel to the axis of the bend (about foreland fold-and-thrust belts. However, the in other Neogene foreland structures. east-northeast) to prevent them from crossing. Andean foreland shows abrupt variations in The hinterland north of 27°S comprises the From the points of intersection, we constructed a structural style and magnitude of deformation, Western Cordillera and the Altiplano-Puna high shortening curve that depicts shortening as a suggesting that upper plate shortening might plateau and parts of the Eastern Cordillera of function of position on the line of reference (Fig- vary accordingly. In this paper we have com- Bolivia; south of 27°S includes the western parts ure 2). Because shortening values for both the piled both published and our own shortening of the Principal Cordillera. The structural style in thrust belt and the hinterland are scarce, we show estimates for the Central Andes between lat 3°S the hinterland is characterized by thick-skinned two curves: a better constrained one for the fore- and 40°S, as derived from balanced cross- thrusts, some of them with strike-slip compo- land belt alone, and a less well-constrained one sections. We compare these estimates with vari- nents, that have accommodated much less short- for the entire back arc. The curve of backarc ations of crustal thickness deduced from topo- ening than the thrust belts. shortening can be taken as a proxy for total upper
Geology; August 1998; v. 26; no. 8; p. 723–726; 2 figures; 1 table. 723
Figure 1. A: Morphological and structural subdivi- sions of Central Andean backarc area between lat 3°S and 40°S. B: Major Neogene structures and locations of cross sec- tions and of balanced map (ruled area) used in short- ening estimates. Numbers are keyed to Table 1. Bro- ken lines indicate posi- tions of Peru-Chile trench axis and line of reference referred to in text.
724 GEOLOGY, August 1998
it difficult to establish an upper limit to the short- ening in depth-extrapolated cross sections. In the internal zones of mountain belts, the point where the basement becomes involved in thrusting is particularly critical. Filling the same area on a cross section requires less shortening if thick base- ment thrust sheets are stacked instead of a thin sedimentary thrust sheets. Choosing between solu- tions involving thin-skinned structures or base- ment wedges has a major impact on the shortening value derived (e.g., 250 km vs. 140 km for a tran- sect in southern Bolivia; Kley, 1996). Despite these uncertainties, the shortening values derived by dif- ferent workers on the same Andean foreland belt transects are often relatively close. For example, the foreland belt of southern Bolivia at 21°S was inferred to be shortened by 115 km (Dunn et al., Figure 2. Variations of shortening along strike of Central Andes. Equivalent shortening curve is de- 1995), 125 km (Baby et al., 1997), and 140 km rived from crustal cross-section area assuming all crustal thickening is tectonic. Curve is for area (Kley, 1996). This suggests that shortening esti- elevated above 0.3 km from topography averaged over 100-km-wide swaths (Isacks, 1988); dashed mates based on balanced cross sections are rela- part is from conventional topographic profiles. Shortening curves for entire backarc and foreland thrust belt are derived from geologic shortening estimates (see Table 1). Half-filled dots between tively insensitive to changes of the internal struc- foreland belt curve and entire backarc curve correspond to cross sections that comprise more tural geometries as long as the assumptions about than foreland belt, but not entire backarc, or to areas where there is no clear-cut boundary between the general structural style at depth are the same. foreland and central belts. Note large discrepancies between crustal area and geologic estimate The most critical segments of the Central curves at northern and southern ends of Altiplano-Puna plateau. For further explanations, see text. Andean shortening curve are the two minima in southern Peru and northern Argentina, neither of plate shortening, because the forearc has suffered The shortening values deduced from balanced which is well constrained. In southern Peru, the very little contraction in Neogene time (Isacks, cross sections are consistently too low with respect foreland dipping monocline at the mountain front 1988; Schmitz, 1994). The two curves show that to the crustal area curve over the entire Altiplano- may indicate a triangle-zone at depth and thus a shortening increases toward a maximum at the Puna plateau, but the difference increases drasti- large amount of “hidden” contraction. In fact, Arica bend, as suggested earlier (Isacks, 1988). cally at the northern and southern ends of the gravity data have been used as evidence for low- However, there are two marked minima of short- plateau. Interestingly, these are areas of thin litho- density sedimentary rocks underthrust beneath ening that interrupt this general trend and corre- sphere according to seismic wave attenuation data, metamorphic rocks of the Eastern Cordillera in spond to the northwestern and southern termina- whereas the remainder of the plateau is underlain that area (Fan et al., 1996). In northern Argentina, tions of the thin-skinned Subandean foreland by thick, cold lithosphere (Whitman et al. 1996). where a relatively thin cover of Neogene strata belt. In Figure 2, the shortening curves are com- The implication is that tectonic shortening con- overlies crystalline basement, the structural style at pared with a curve for crustal cross-section areas tributes to overall crustal thickening in different the mountain front is clearly thick-skinned; there is above 0.3 km elevation (after Isacks, 1988). This segments of the Central Andes in very different de- no evidence for shallow detachment horizons or curve can be read as a shortening curve if the fol- grees, and/or that uplift in some segments has a passive roof backthrusting (Allmendinger, 1986). lowing assumptions are made: (1) The crust is in larger contribution from processes other than Thus, the small amount of foreland shortening is local isostatic eqilibrium (i.e., crustal thickness is crustal thickening. If the curves derived from bal- well constrained here. However, it has been pro- proportional to topographic elevation); (2) crustal anced sections in Figure 2 are taken at face value, posed that decreased foreland shortening is bal- thickening is entirely due to tectonic shortening; no more than 30% of the crustal thickness can be anced by more shortening of the hinterland areas, and (3) original crustal thickness had a constant attributed to tectonic shortening at 27°S, which especially of the Puna plateau (Allmendinger and value (40 km in Fig. 2). Because erosion of implies that other processes of crustal thicken- Gubbels, 1996: Kley, 1996). In spite of a likely in- material from the mountain belt is not fully taken ing—or uplift—must be dominant there. In con- crease of hinterland shortening, the abrupt drop in into account, the cross-section area for the crust trast, there would be an excess of shortening at foreland shortening is probably not fully compen- yields an underestimate of the tectonic shortening 30°S, suggesting that crustal material was lost dur- sated by internal deformation of the Puna. In order required to form elevated topography and a sup- ing contraction or was transferred to adjacent areas. to achieve a steady southward decrease in shorten- porting crustal root. However, the region above ing, the Puna would have to be shortened by about 0.3 km elevation does include a substantial part DISCUSSION 150–170 km, and an estimate of Puna shortening of the foreland basin and thus a considerable vol- To assess the implications of the shortening of 50 km (Cladouhos et al., 1994) is substantially ume of eroded and redeposited material. More curves shown in Figure 2, two questions arise. (1) short of that required value. Furthermore, 160 km importantly, because the main concerns here are How reliable are the balanced cross-section data? of shortening would correspond to more than variations of shortening rather than absolute (2) If the drastic drops in foreland shortening are 40% contraction of the plateau, a value more typi- magnitudes, erosion will have no major impact real, are they compensated by increased shorten- cal of thin-skinned thrust belts than of basement- on our analysis unless there are strong along- ing of the crust in the still incompletely known involved thrust belts. Thus, although their precise strike variations in the degree of denudation. hinterland areas? amplitudes are not well constrained, we believe Although the effect of erosion is likely to become The most serious problems for cross-section that the distinct shortening minima and maxima of more pronounced toward the equator due to in- balancing arise from poorly constrained struc- the shortening curve depict real variations. creased precipitation (Isacks, 1988), this should tures for which no geophysical data are available. produce a uniform general trend superimposed In foreland belts, passive roof duplexes or CONCLUSIONS on the crustal area curve, and not marked triangle-zones can accommodate large amounts Amounts of tectonic shortening as derived maxima and minima. of shortening on bedding-parallel thrusts, making from both geologic structures and crustal cross-
GEOLOGY, August 1998 725
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