Cross faults in extensional settings: Stress triggering, displacement localization, and implications for the origin of blunt troughs at Valles Marineris, Mars

Abstract

Motivated by conflicting interpretations concerning the origin of blunt terminations of troughs at Valles Marineris, Mars, we investigate the reactivation of preexisting cross faults in response to stress changes associated with slippage along a major, basin‐bounding normal fault (i.e., border fault). Coulomb stress changes indicate that cross fault reactivation is possible in both the footwalls and hanging walls of border faults, although this is dependent on the distance between the border and cross faults. Cross faults accommodate dip‐slip normal motion for most border fault geometries and conditions we tested, but strike‐slip motions are predicted when preexisting cross faults are vertical. Furthermore, although lateral extensions of the border fault (LEBFs) may nucleate within cross fault footwalls at all stages of border fault development, they are favored to develop when border faults and cross fault tip lines are proximal. Observations from the Valles Marineris extensional province, Mars, are consistent with (1) normal displacements along cross faults, (2) numerous examples of pit‐chains, interpreted to represent surface expressions of lateral extensions to the border fault (LEBF), (3) the lack of well‐developed cross faults in the footwall of border faults, and (4) the inference that tapered trough ends formed in areas that lacked cross faults prior to the main phase of extension at Valles Marineris. We suggest a new sequence of deformation that accounts for the formation of blunt‐trough terminations during the major phase of Valles Marineris extension: coeval and locally bidirectional extension, that results from local stress field changes associated with border fault growth in a dominantly unidirectional remote (extensional) strain field. By implication, many of the irregular closed troughs such as Hebes Chasma are better interpreted as grabens rather than collapse depressions.