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Effect of subducting sea-floor roughness on fore-arc kinematics, Pacific coast, Costa Rica
(Geological Society of America, 1998-05-01) Fisher, Donald M.; Gardner, Thomas W.; Marshall, Jeffrey S.; Sak, Peter B.; Protti, Marino
Fault kinematics and uplift in the Costa Rican fore arc of the Middle America convergent margin are controlled to a large extent by roughness on the subducting Cocos plate. Along the northwest flank of the incoming Cocos Ridge, seafloor is characterized by short wavelength roughness related to northeast-trending seamount chains. Onland projection of the rough subducting crust coincides with a system of active faults oriented at high angles to the margin that segment the fore-arc thrust belt and separate blocks with contrasting uplift rates. Trunk segments of Pacific slope fluvial systems typically follow these margin-perpendicular faults. Regionally developed marine and fluvial terraces are correlated between drainages and acrossfaults along the Costa Rican Pacific coast. Terrace separations across block-bounding faults reveal a pattern of fore-arc uplift that coincides roughly with the distribution of incoming seamounts. Magnitude and distribution of Quaternary uplift along the Costa Rican Pacific coast suggests that, despite a thin incoming sediment pile, the inner fore arc shows an accumulation of mass—a characteristic that may be due to underplating of seamounts beneath the fore-arc high.