Late Cenozoic faulting deformation of the Fanshi Basin (Northern Shanxi rift, China), inferred from paleostress analysis of mesoscale fault-slip data

The Fanshi Basin is one of the NE-SW-striking depocenters formed along the northern segment of the fault-bounded Shanxi rift. In order to understand the crustal driving stresses that led to the basin formation and development, a paleostress analysis of a large number of fault-slip data collected mainly at the boundaries of the basin was accomplished. The stress inversion of these data revealed three stress regimes. The oldest SR1 was a Neogene stress regime giving rise to a strike-slip deformation with NE-SW contraction and NW-SE extension. SR1 activated the large faults trending NNE-NE, i.e., (sub) parallel to the main strike of the Shanxi rift, as right-lateral strike-slip faults. It was subjected to the Shanxi rift before the activation of the Fansi Basin boundary fault, i.e., the Fanshi (or Wutai) fault, as a normal fault. The next is a short-lived NE-SW extensional stress regime SR2 in the Early Pleistocene, which shows the inception of the basin's extension. A strong NW-SE to NNW-SSE extensional stress regime SR3 governed the northern segment of the Shanxi rift since the Late Pleistocene and is the present-day extension. It gives rise to the current half-graben geometry of the Fanshi Basin by activating the Fanshi (or Wutai) fault as a normal fault in the southern part of the graben. Because of the dominance of the NW-SE to NNW-SSE extension, which is perpendicular to the NE-SW extension, mutual permutations between σ3 and σ2 due to inherited fault patterns might occur while the stress regime changed from SR1 to SR3.