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McConnel Thrust at Mount Yamnuska, AB
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Structural Geology and Tectonics EAS 421/521
© John W.F. Waldron 2001 - 2017
In 2017 this course will be taught by Dr. Dinu Pana.
These notes will be provided as background information. For details of scheduling and requirements for the current course, students should consult "eClass" and "Bear Tracks" or speak with Dr. Pana directly.
Structural Geology is primarily concerned with the deformation of the solid Earth. We will see and learn about structures produced by deformation in outcrops, in geologic maps, in cross-sections and seismic profiles, and under the microscope. The Structural Geology and Tectonics course is concerned with understanding, and where possible measuring, the deformation that produced those structures. We use this information to understand both the tectonic causes of deformation and the importance of structures for exploration of the Earth's lithosphere.
Like the lithosphere, this site is permanently under construction: please be patient if not all the links are connected.
What's the difference between EAS 421 and 521?
- EAS 421 is a second course in structural geology and tectonics, built upon the foundation of EAS 233 'Geologic Structures'. You should take EAS 421 if you want a broad understanding of the processes that have moved plates, deformed rocks, and built mountains, over 4 billion years of Earth history. If you are registered in EAS421 and have not taken EAS 233, or if you took EAS 233 before 2009, please let the instructor know.
- EAS 521 is a graduate-level version of EAS 421. It is aimed at graduate students in the Integrated Petroelum Geoscience program, but may be taken by other graduate students with permission of the instructor. EAS 521 is not suitable for graduate students who have already taken more advanced undergraduate courses in structural geology equivalent to EAS 421. If this is the case for you, you may be interested in EAS 541 Topics in Tectonics and Structural Geology.
- Students who register in EAS 521 will attend the same lectures and labs as EAS 421 students, but the assigned work will involve some different components, appropriate to graduate-level study. Graduate students in the IPG program will attend lab D3 for this reason. EAS 421 and 521 will be marked and graded separately.
Resources
eClass page (for registered students)
Note: sample test questions (supplementary evaluative material) are now available in eclass
Textbook "Structural Geology" by Haakon Fossen 2nd edition.
Animations and images on this site are copyright © John Waldron 1998-2017. (For non-commercial, educational use of this material, contact john.waldron@ualberta.ca)
Topics covered in lectures, with supplementary materials
- I Data and interpretation in structural geology
- II Plate Kinematics
- Reading:
- Background: Frisch, Meschede & Blakely 2011 Plate Tectonics, Chapter 1: Contractional theory, continental drift and plate tectonics
- Nuts and bolts: Frisch, Meschede & Blakely 2011 Plate Tectonics, Chapter 2: Plate movements and their geometric relationships
- Notes
- Formula sheet
- USGS recent earthquakes including last 7 days (choose zoom to.. and then World).
- UNAVCO GPS data
- III Stress
- Reading. Several sections in the textbook Structural Geology by Fossen cover topics we address in this unit. Although this list contains several chapters, they are quite short:
- Chapter 4 Stress
- Chapter 5 Stress in the Lithosphere
- Chapter 6 Rheology: section on Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio, pages 102-105 only.
- Chapter 10: Kinematics and paleostress in the brittle regime
- World stress map
- IV Rifts and extensional tectonic environments
- Notes
- Reading: Structural Geology by Fossen
- Chapter 9: Faults
- Material in section 9.1 should be familiar from a previous course. Read this section to recap fault geometry and map-scale interpretations of separation and slip.
- Sections 9.2 - 9.6 deal with what happens on fault planes and is very relevant to this section of the course; most of the examples are taken from hydrocarbon exploration in rifts.
- Chapter 18; Extensional regimes deals with tectonic environments that we cover in this section. Note that 18.11 deals with post-orogenic extension, which we will look at in a later section of the course, after dealing with orogens.
- Chapter 20 deals with salt tectonics, an increasingly important feature of passive continental margins which we examin in the last part of this section.
- V Deformation and strain
- Notes
- Readings: Structural Geology by Fossen Chapters 2, sections 2.1-2.16, and chapter 3. In this section we focus on finite strain - the difference between rocks in the undeformed state and the deformed state. We will cover material in later sections of chapter 2 (dealing with progressive strain and flow) later in the course.
- Formula sheet
- VI Introduction
to orogens
- Notes
- Readings: Structural Geology by Fossen Chapter 17
- VII Foreland fold-thrust belts
- VIII Subduction and mélange
- IX Metamorphic belts
- Notes
- Reading: Structural Geology by Fossen Ch. 12, 13, 22
- X Rheology and shear zones
- XI Progressive strain and flow
- XII Strike-slip tectonics
- Notes
- Reading: Structural Geology by Fossen Chapter 19.
- Additional diagrams illustrating strike slip, transpression, transtension.
Other animations and links