Abstract
A quantitative assessment of landform and sediment in Quaternary deposits, focusing upon the Mountain Front Thrust (MFT) manifests neotectonics in the aftermath of the orogeny, is intended in the Darjeeling Sub-Himalayas, to feel the ever-fecund pulses of ground tremors. The Sub-Himalayan hilly terrain, generally without sediment cover, has a distinctive character on two sides of the Mountain Front Thrust in terms of drainage pattern and density, stream order, 1st order stream gradient, and shape and size of watershed basins. The sinuosity of MFT <1.4 elicits tectonic deformation. Comparatively smaller and more elongated watershed basins residing at the southern flank of MFT suggest steepness along with tectonic imprints. Significantly more frequent occurrence of parallel drainage patterns, comparatively lower stream orders, and consequent reduction in drainage density on this thrust front are well anticipated. The River Tista in the area achieves minimum gradient on the crest of the MFT eliciting uplift. Frequent changes in river gradient around MFT without any correlation with lithologic changes testify tectonic effect. The valley floor-width/height ratios (<0.5) derived from this river bear clear attestation to the tectonic youthfulness of the studied terrain. This uplift of the MFT recorded the basin subsidence in fluvial sequence building with thinning of valley cycles through vertical stacking of warped and tilted multi-generated terraces along River Tista in the Sub-Himalayan region. A concomitantly progressive increment of clast sizes and distal crystalline rocks in a vertical succession of sediment piles with southward migration on thrust shoulder along with enhancement of sedimentation rate upstream and channel incision suggests the directive measurements of tectonism, not climatic effect. The common presence of penecontemporaneous deformational structures in the pile is also suggestive of intermittent tectonic disturbances.
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Acknowledgements
SM acknowledges to UGC, Extension Activity under XII Plan General Development Assistance, Govt. Of India (R-11/406/15) for financial support. All the authors express gratitude to Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India for infrastructural facilities.
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Mandal, S., Roy, P. (2022). Assessment of Neotectonic Effect on Quaternary Deposits in Darjeeling Himalayas. In: Bhattacharya, H.N., Bhattacharya, S., Das, B.C., Islam, A. (eds) Himalayan Neotectonics and Channel Evolution. Society of Earth Scientists Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95435-2_10
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