High Stress Deformation and Short-Term Thermal Pulse Preserved in Pyroxene Microstructures From Exhumed Lower Crustal Seismogenic Faults (Lofoten, Norway)

Earthquake rupture in strong, anhydrous lower continental crust requires high brittle failure stresses unless high pore fluid pressures are present. Several mechanisms proposed to generate high stresses at depth imply transient loading driven by a spectrum of stress changes, ranging from highly localized stress amplifications to crustal-scale stress transfers. High transient stresses up to GPa magnitude are proposed by field and modeling studies, but the evidence for transient prerupture loading is often difficult to extract from the geological record due to overprinting by coseismic damage and slip. However, the local preservation of deformation microstructures indicative of crystal-plastic and brittle deformation associated with the seismic cycle in the lower crust offers the opportunity to constrain the progression of deformation before, during and after rupture, including stress and temperature evolution. Here, detailed study of pyroxene microstructures characterizes the short-term evolution of high-stress deformation and temperature changes experienced before and during lower crustal earthquake rupture. Pyroxenes are sampled from pseudotachylyte-bearing faults and damage zones of lower crustal earthquakes recorded in the exhumed granulite facies terrane of Lofoten, northern Norway. The progressive sequence of microstructures indicates localized high-stress (at the GPa level) prerupture loading accommodated by low-temperature plasticity, followed by coseismic pulverization-style fragmentation and subsequent grain growth triggered by the short-term heat pulse associated with frictional sliding. Thus, up to GPa-level transient high stress (both differential and shear) leading to earthquake nucleation in the dry lower crust can occur in nature, and be preserved in the fault rock microstructure.

Automated summary

This study examines the microstructures of earthquake fault zones in the lower crust of Lofoten, Norway, and reveals that high stress loading (up to GPa magnitude) can occur in the dry lower crust and be preserved in the microstructure of fault rocks.