Randall B. Smith’s research while affiliated with University of California, Santa Cruz and other places

The island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, has been shaped and deformed as a result of collision with the Sula platform, a sliver of continental material from the northern margin of Australia-New Guinea. The collision has resulted in rotation of the north volcanic arm of Sulawesi and the development of the accretionary wedge of the North Sulawesi trench. The North Sulawesi trench changes laterally from a zone of no active deformation in the eastern part to a wide accretionary wedge in the west. Early stages of thrusting produce a steep frontal slope (8°-16°), indicative of relatively high basal shear stress, whereas the more advanced (western) zone of thrusting produces a gentle (2°) slope, consistent with low basal shear stress. Reported paleomagnetic data suggest post late Eocene counter-clockwise rotation of the North Arm, and the offshore geophysics are explained by a pivot of the North Arm with respect to the Celebes basin about the eastern end of the arc. Convergence between the north Banda basin and Southeast Sulawesi is documented by the presence of the Tolo thrust. Its outcrop is strongly arcuate and its accretionary wedge varies in width from a minimum of a few kilometers at each end to a maximum of 30-40 km in the central part. The northern end transforms to the leftlateral Matano fault, with a reported offset of 20 km. The southern end of the thrust projects toward the deformed rocks of Buton, but the structural relations there are not clear. The Matano fault zone appears to connect westward with the Palu fault, which forms the western transform of the North Sulawesi trench. The Palu-Matano fault system acts as a trench-trench transform between the North Sulawesi trench and the Tolo thrust, and this system is described by the same rotation pole as that for the Sulawesi North Arm.

The western part of the North American Cordillera has been divided into numerous suspect terranes. Some of these terranes have traveled hundreds to thousands of kilometres between the time of their formation and their final incorporation into the accretionary belt of the Cordillera. Most of the terranes appear to be relics of island arcs, oceanic plateaus and islands, continental margin fragments, and complex accretionary terranes, the latter including melange belts, ophiolite fragments, and thrust-faulted forearc provinces. Because the terranes have complex histories and diverse stratigraphies, it has been difficult to envisage an actualistic setting for the Mesozoic Cordillera. Here we propose an analogy with the tectonic setting of the Indo-Pacific region, from the Tonga trench on the east to eastern Indonesia on the west. This region comprises several distinct island arcs, several large oceanic plateaus, numerous accretionary terranes, melange zones, ophiolite fragments, and a variety of continental fragments, all moving toward the central collision zone. Like the Cordillera, this part of the Indo-Pacific region is undergoing oblique convergence, driven by relatively high rates of movement between the oceanic plates and the collision zone. Also analogous to the Cordillera is the formation of a foreland fold and thrust belt, developing between the collision zone and the Australian continent, and a zone of basement-rooted foreland folds, suggestive of an early Laramide style of deformation. *Present address: Sohio Petroleum Company, Denver, Colorado 80202