The Olympic Mountains in northwestern Washington, USA are defined by the arcuate shape of the basaltic Crescent Formation (Fm.) that wraps a faulted and folded meta-sedimentary core. This area was developed through accretion and exhumation by subduction-related processes, but how this relates to the deformational history of the area is not fully understood. The region has been mapped geologically, however little focus has been placed on interpreting meso-scale structures. This study investigates structures along a transect where the Hamma Hamma River crosses the Hurricane Ridge Fault, which juxtaposes the meta-sedimentary core (west) and the basaltic Crescent Fm. (east). In the study area, the meta-sedimentary unit is characterized by outcrop scale folding with a calculated fold axis of 69-->342 and a penetrative foliation with a representative orientation of (178, 75). The folds and foliation are crosscut by two fracture populations with representative orientations of (115, 61) and (303, 76). The pillow basalts of the Crescent Fm. are near vertical, N-S striking beds that are cut by four fault groups. Fault Groups A and B have representative orientations of (304, 37) and (207, 59), respectively, and are associated with similarly oriented fracture populations. Fault Group C crosscuts Groups A and B and has a representative orientation of (031, 61). Fault Group D runs subparallel to the outcrop, cuts all other faults, and has a representative orientation of (087, 50). From an interpretation of this data, a deformation model is presented that proposes three distinct periods of deformation under three different states of stress. The first period was dominated by E-W or ENE-WSW oriented compression, followed by a period of N-S or NNW-SSE oriented compression, followed by vertical compression.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-5955 |
| Date | 22 April 2019 |
| Creators | Biesiada, Veronica Catherine |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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