Crystallographic preferred orientation of clay minerals in sediments from the Hikurangi accretionary prism offshore New Zealand

The shortening of sediments in accretionary prisms is accomplished by localized faulting as well as non-localized deformation. While faulting is often easily recognized from seismic sections, accessing the amount and extent of non-localized deformation is rather challenging. In order to address this challenge, we explore samples from the active accretionary prism offshore Gisbourne, NZ at the Hikurangi margin which contains accreted sediments of Pliocene to recent age. Drilling at Site U1318F of IODP Expedition 375 recovered non- to semi-lithified sediments from a major accretionary fault, the Papaku Fault, including its hanging wall and footwall. The crystallographic preferred orientation (CPO) of the clay minerals is a measure for their alignment and was determined in 66 sediment samples from the drill core (250-500 mbsf) using high energy X-rays. The results show that the CPO strength of the clay mineral basal planes (00l) is in general weak and no depth-related trend can be observed. In the hanging wall of the Papaku Fault, (00l) pole figures have non-rotationally symmetric, unimodal density distributions displaying incomplete girdles. In the footwall, most (00l) pole figures exhibit unimodal, rotationally symmetric to weak girdle density distributions, with most maxima pointing parallel or subparallel to the drill core axis. Fault zone samples also exhibit rotationally symmetric, unimodal (00l) distributions, with maxima perpendicular to the fault plane.

We assume that pre-shortening and pre-faulting, sediments had a weak initial CPO related to sedimentation and compaction with a rotationally symmetric, unimodal (00l) distribution. The girdle shape of the distribution in the hangingwall and to a minor extent in the footwall is introduced by non-localized deformation which results in grain-scale folding. Accordingly, diffuse shortening was larger in the present-day hanging wall than in the present-day footwall. Furthermore, we interpret the CPO in the Papaku fault itself to be a result of sediment shearing, overprinting any pre-existing CPO. The position of the Papaku fault is compatible with fault initiation where diffuse shortening was unable to propagate sufficiently towards the foreland.

While our results also confirm existing tectonic models from this part of the Hikurangi margin, more importantly they demonstrate implications for strain distribution in fault and thrust systems as well as the usefulness of clay mineral CPO for unravelling deformation and tectonic processes in accretionary prism sediments.