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In situ evidence for dextral active motion at the Arabia–India plate boundary

Nature Geoscience volume 1, pages 54–58 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The Arabia–India plate boundary—also called the Owen fracture zone—is perhaps the least-known boundary among large tectonic plates1,2,3,4,5,6. Although it was identified early on as an example of a transform fault converting the divergent motion along the Carlsberg Ridge to convergent motion in the Himalayas7, its structure and rate of motion remains poorly constrained. Here we present the first direct evidence for active dextral strike-slip motion along this fault, based on seafloor multibeam mapping of the Arabia–India–Somalia triple junction in the northwest Indian Ocean. There is evidence for ∼12 km of apparent strike-slip motion along the mapped segment of the Owen fracture zone, which is terminated to the south by a 50-km-wide pull-apart basin bounded by active faults. By evaluating these new constraints within the context of geodetic models of global plate motions, we determine a robust angular velocity for the Arabian plate relative to the Indian plate that predicts 2–4 mm yr−1 dextral motion along the Owen fracture zone. This transform fault was probably initiated around 8 million years ago in response to a regional reorganization of plate velocities and directions8,9,10,11, which induced a change in configuration of the triple junction. Infrequent earthquakes of magnitude 7 and greater may occur along the Arabia–India plate boundary, unless deformation is in the form of aseismic creep.

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Figure 1: Location map and bathymetry of the OFZ and Arabia–India–Somalia triple junction.
Figure 2: Three-dimensional and map views of the active fault discovered at the southern extremity of the OFZ (location in Fig. 1b).
Figure 3: 3.5 kHz seismic profile across the pull-apart basin (location in Figs 1b and 2b).
Figure 4: Arabia–India GPS kinematics.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. DeMets and R. Reilinger for their reviews. We are grateful to Captain Alain Le Bail, officers and crew members of the BHO Beautemps-Beaupré, and to the French Navy Hydrographer Simon Blin and his hydrographic team of the ‘Mission Océanographique de l’Atlantique’. We acknowledge the support of SHOM and IFREMER for the AOC cruise.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Géologie, Ecole normale supérieure, CNRS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France

    Marc Fournier & Nicolas Chamot-Rooke

  2. Laboratoire de Tectonique, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, CNRS, UCP, Case 129, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris, France

    Marc Fournier, Carole Petit, Philippe Huchon & Claude Lepvrier

  3. Département de Géosciences, Université de Franche-Comté, 16 route de Gray, 25030 Besançon, France

    Olivier Fabbri

  4. Laboratoire de Tectonique, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, CNRS, UPMC, 5 mail Gay-Lussac, Neuville/Oise, 95031 Cergy-Pontoise, France

    Bertrand Maillot

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  1. Marc Fournier
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Correspondence to Marc Fournier.

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Fournier, M., Chamot-Rooke, N., Petit, C. et al. In situ evidence for dextral active motion at the Arabia–India plate boundary. Nature Geosci 1, 54–58 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo.2007.24

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