Roanoke River lineament and other geomorphic anomalies in the Coastal Plain of northeastern North Carolina, USA: LiDAR evidence for late Quaternary tectonics
Ronald T. Marple
302 Riverplace West, Gatesville, TX 76528, USA
James D. Hurd, Jr.
Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, The University of Connecticut U-87, Room 308, 1376 Storrs Road, Storrs, CT 06269-4087, USA
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/ear.v3i2.8890
Keywords: Roanoke River lineament; Roanoke River fault zone; East Coast fault system (ECFS); Tar River right-step releasing offset (TRO); Corduroy Swamp lineament; Corduroy Swamp fault; Tarboro fault zone; transtension
Abstract
LiDAR images of northeastern North Carolina in the southeastern USA revealed a ~60-km-long, E-W-oriented geomorphic lineament that crosses the northern side of the Albemarle embayment, herein named the Roanoke River lineament. It is defined by morphological changes along the Roanoke River valley northeast of Palmyra that are aligned with a gentle ~40-km-long, E-W-oriented, south-facing topographic scarp to the east and an angular stream bend to the west. Based on its oblique orientation relative to the regional ENE-WSW-oriented horizontal compressive stress field, SHmax, and the style of geomorphic anomalies that define the lineament, we interpret the Roanoke River lineament to be the surface expression of a buried sinistral strike-slip fault zone, named herein the Roanoke River fault zone. This proposed fault zone may have formed to accommodate the dilatational change in volume produced by dextral motion across the ~10-km-wide Tar River right-step releasing offset in the dextral East Coast strike-slip fault system (ECFS) beneath the Atlantic Coastal Plain. North of the Roanoke River lineament is the ~55-km-long, WNW-ESE-oriented Corduroy Swamp lineament that coincides with the western Norfolk arch. Based on its oblique orientation relative to SHmax and the geomorphic evidence for uplift along the lineament, we postulate that it is the surface expression of a buried transpressional sinistral strike-slip fault, herein named the Corduroy Swamp fault. The existence of these and other faults interpreted herein could have major implications for the tectonic development of the Albemarle embayment and Norfolk arch along the U.S. Atlantic continental margin.
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