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Tectonic Implications of Small-Scale Structures in the Main Central Thrust Zone of Garhwal Higher Himalaya

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Structural Geometry of Mobile Belts of the Indian Subcontinent

Part of the book series: Society of Earth Scientists Series ((SESS))

Abstract

In the Garhwal Himalaya, the Main Central Thrust Zone (MCTZ) is bounded by the Main Central Thrust (MCT) in the south and Vaikrita Thrust (VT) in the north. The MCTZ along the Alakhnanda, Bhagirathi and Yamuna valleys is marked by different small-scale structures and are classified as early structures i.e. pre-thrusting, structures due to progressive ductile shearing (syn-thrusting) and late structures (post-thrusting). The detailed study of small-scale structures/kinematic indicators such as sigmoidal foliations, shear band (S-C) structures, asymmetric porphyroclast tails, intergranular faults, folded layering and sheath folds suggest top to SSW sense of movement in the rocks of MCTZ of Garhwal Himalaya. The strain studies and crystallographic preferred orientation of quartz reveal that mesoscopic ductile shear zones grow in a narrow zone in response to very high strain, which deformed the internal crystallographic fabric of rock. The study of compressive stress from several mesoscopic sigmoidal foliations suggest that, in MCTZ the maximum compressive stress direction acted in the NNE-SSW direction horizontally synchronous to the northward movement of Indian Plate.

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Acknowledgements

The present article is a review of the earlier work carried by the authors and research students and co-workers. The diagrams and text published earlier have been utilized after modification and have been referred in the text. We also acknowledge Prof. T. K. Biswal for improving the quality of the manuscript and efficient editorial handling.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India

    Sayandeep Banerjee & Hari B. Srivastava

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  1. Sayandeep Banerjee
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  2. Hari B. Srivastava
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Tapas Kumar Biswal

  2. Geological Survey of India (Retd), Kolkata, India

    Sumit Kumar  Ray

  3. Department für Geodynamik und Sedimentologie, Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Grasemann

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Banerjee, S., Srivastava, H.B. (2020). Tectonic Implications of Small-Scale Structures in the Main Central Thrust Zone of Garhwal Higher Himalaya. In: Biswal, T., Ray, S., Grasemann, B. (eds) Structural Geometry of Mobile Belts of the Indian Subcontinent. Society of Earth Scientists Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40593-9_10

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