The St. Gallen Fault Zone: a long-lived, multiphase structure in the North Alpine Foreland Basin revealed by 3D seismic data

The St. Gallen Fault Zone (SFZ) is a system of major NNE-SSW striking normal faults within the North Alpine Foreland Basin (NAFB), just west of the city of St. Gallen. It used to be only roughly known from 2D seismic data, locally displaying offsets of up to 300 m at the level of the Mesozoic strata. We present a detailed structural interpretation of a recently acquired 3D seismic dataset that reveals the occurrence of multiphase tectonic activity along the SFZ from at least the Late Paleozoic to the early Oligocene, and possibly even later. We can show that the SFZ roots in extensional basement structures that bound small Permo-Carboniferous grabens. Thickness changes in the younger sediments above these Paleozoic grabens indicate several phases of tectonic subsidence during the Triassic and the Jurassic. The Lower Cenozoic units in the northernmost part of the 3D seismic area are also offset by the SFZ. No offsets can be identified in the overlying, shallower part of the Cenozoic units. Most faults constituting the SFZ are favourably oriented in the present-day stress field (S-Hmax NNW-SSE) to be reactivated in strike-slip mode. The seismic events induced by testing operations at the geothermal exploration borehole St. Gallen GT-1 (SG GT-1) in July 2013 revealed that, even though the seismicity of northeastern Switzerland is considered to be low and diffuse, parts of the SFZ have to be regarded as critically stressed. Combining the interpretation of geological and seismic data, we conclude that the SFZ represents a reactivated basement-rooted normal fault, which was active during several phases in Permo-Carboniferous and Mesozoic times and that is still active today in strike-slip mode.