![[ ALPINE FAULT EXPOSURE ]At the start of this year, on our road trip around the South Island, Teghan and I were on the...](https://img4.photlo.com/580/282/1843446105802820.jpg)
02/03/2021
[ ALPINE FAULT EXPOSURE ]
At the start of this year, on our road trip around the South Island, Teghan and I were on the hunt for an exposure of the Alpine Fault.
This fault marks the boundary between the Australian and Pacific Plate’s. While movement along this boundary is primarily in the form of ‘lateral slip’, with the plates sliding against each other, great uplift has also occurred, forming the Southern Alps as seen today.
Using fault trace maps, we managed to find an exposure just north of Fox Glacier. While bush covers the majority of the fault, the slip in this area made it possible to view the faults features.
As shown in the diagrams, schist’s found in the Pacific Plate collide with granite’s in the Australian Plate. Through fault movement, the parent rocks are fragmented to form distinctively coloured cataclastic material at the fault interface.
Along with the image and map, I have created a diagram within SolidWorks to show the Fault's components.
