TECTONICS OF STRIKE-SLIP RESTRAINING AND RELEASING BENDS

Abstract

One of the remarkable tectonic features of the Earth’s crust is the widespread presence of long, approximately straight and geomorphically prominent strike-slip faults which are a kinematic consequence of large-scale motion of plates on a sphere. Strike-slip faults form in continental and oceanic transform plate boundaries; in intraplate settings as a continental interior response to a plate collision; and can occur as transfer zones connecting normal faults in rift systems and thrust faults in fold–thrust belts. Strike-slip faults also are common in obliquely convergent subduction settings where interplate strain is partitioned into arc-parallel strike-slip zones within the fore-arc, arc or back-arc region.