Neotectonism in the Indian Subcontinent: Landscape Evolution

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Chapter 1

The Dynamic Indian Crust

K.S. Valdiya; Jaishri Sanwal

Abstract

The Indian subcontinent is a part of a very dynamic crustal plate that is converging northwards towards mainland Asia at a rate which varies in time and space. Within its fragmented framework, a large number of faults and shear zones developed thousands and even millions of years ago. Reactivated time and again due to the buildup of stresses resulting from the northwards movement of the Indian continental plate, these faults and fractures have played a primary role in the shaping of the landforms and landscapes that we see today. The movements on rupture planes also constrained the establishment of drainage patterns and the aberrations in river behaviour. It is the rupture-related dislocation of landforms and the sinking and rising of the fault-affected ground that brought about discernible physiographic changes, particularly where there were continued and ongoing movements, such as in the Himalayan province pressed hard between the northwards-pushing Peninsular India and the Asian landmass. Recurrent seismicity provides eloquent testimony to the neotectonic resurgence of the faulted terrains and the terrane-defining faults.

Keywords

Faulted framework; Terrane-defining faults; Geomorphic modification; Continental convergence; Seafloor spreading; Seismicity and natural hazards; Morphogenic phase; Neotectonics; Neotectonism indicators

Crustal Plate in Tectonic Turmoil

The Indian subcontinent is a part of a very dynamic crustal plate. The heavier lower layer of this crust is splitting and spreading in the ocean around (Plate 1.1) and the lighter upper layer is moving northeastwards. Encountering resistance at its leading edge, the spreading heavier lower layer sank into the interior of the earth or slid locally under the lighter upper layer of the Asian plate as well as the Burmese microplate. In contrast, the lighter upper layer of the crust making up the Indian continent broke up along faults and moved upwards and obliquely eastwards like a passive passenger. The movement speed varied in time and space. The advancing plate then either slipped under or rode over the part in front of it; in the east, it moved sideways and rotated a bit.

Plate 1.1 The shaded relief map of Indian ocean shows the floor. The floor of the Indian Ocean is splitting and spreading laterally, pushing away northeastwards. Continental India is riding like a passive passenger on the spreading lower crust that forms the Indian Ocean floor. ( Base map is prepared by using GMT ).

Within the fragmented framework of the Indian continental crust (Plate 1.2), older faults developed millions of years ago, which were also reactivated in some places and at some points of time. The movements that took place on older and newer faults and fractures are quite apparent on the ground surface in the displacement of landforms, the uplifting and/or sinking of the land, and the deflection and offset of rivers and streams. More often than not, the rupture planes failed to reach the surface, and the manifestation of movement on the ground was minimal. These are the blind faults, which are faults that are in the process of development, and in time will express themselves on the surface.

Plate 1.2 DEM image of fractured framework of the Indian subcontinent. The sketchmap shows important zones of faults, thrusts, and shears, many of which were and are prone to reactivation. (DEM map source: http://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov; The sketchmap modified from Valdiya, K. S. (2016). The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution (2nd ed.). Switzerland, Cham, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer International Publication (924 p.). (Base map from: Amante, C., & Eakins, B. W. (2009). ETOPOI 1 Arc-minute global relief model: procedures, data sources and analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24 (19 pp.).)

In all cases the rupturing of the ground, the dislocation or sliding of rock masses, and the sinking and uplift of the land caused the crust to tremble. Depending on the extent of movement, some earthquakes were felt by humans, but quite a few others were only noted by sensitive instruments recording ground motion. If one were to prepare or to look at a map of sites of occurrences of earthquakes (Plate 1.3), one would be convinced that a great many belts in the Indian crust are indeed in tectonic turmoil. In these sites of earthquake occurrence, the pulling apart or pressing-pushing hard rock masses were related to the lines or belts of ruptures formed in the present or in the past. In the vast expanse of the Indian subcontinent encompassing India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, such regions or belts of ruptures are far too many (Plate 1.2).

Plate 1.3 Epicentral distribution map shows location of sites of moderate to large earthquakes, obviously related to tectonic boundaries of geological terranes. (Modified from the cover page of Ramalingeswara Rao, B. (2015). Seismic activity: Indian scenario Hyderabad: Buddha Publishers.)

One part or the other of the Indian subcontinent is always in tectonic ferment—it is structurally deforming, bodily shaken by earthquakes and recurrtly visited by tectonically induced hazards.

Forces Driving the Indian Crust

The floor of the Arabian Sea is moving northwards and plunging into the Oman Trench just south of the Makran coast of Pakistan (Plate. 1.1). On the eastern side, the floor of the Bay of Bengal is sliding under the Andaman Island Arc–Indonesian Archipelago. A new ocean floor is forming as lavas well up from the interior and freeze in the cold ocean bottom. This is happening at the half rate of 50–60 mm/year across the NW–SE trending Carlsberg Ridge in the Arabian Sea, and at the half rate of 18–24 mm/year across the N–S oriented Central Indian Ocean Ridge (Ramana, Ramprasad, Kamesh Raju, & Desa, 1993; Kamesh Raju, Ramprasad, Rao, Ramalingeswara Rao, & Varghese, 2003).

West of the Konkan–Saurashtra Coast, the Laxmi Basin in the bottom of the Arabian Sea (Plate 1.4 inset) was created as a result of symmetric sea-floor spreading. Lying more than 2100 m deep under the Arabian Sea, the sediment-covered Laxmi Basin, with its seamounts and guyots adjoining the NW–SE trending Laxmi Ridge, is characterized by a pattern of gravity and magnetic anomalies resulting from the intrusion of magmatic material in an essentially oceanic crust and thus pointing to seafloor spreading (Chaubey, Bhattacharya, Murty, & Desa, 1993; Bhattacharya et al., 1994). The floor of the Laxmi Basin is presently spreading laterally east–west at the rate of 12 mm/year (Chaubey et al., 1993, 1998, 2000). The implication is that this spreading of the Laxmi Basin floor is exerting strong pressure on the offshore as well as onshore belts encompassing the Tertiary basins of the Maharashtra and Gujarat coastal belt, including Kachchh (Kutch) (Plate 1.4). This is evident from the fact that the entire belt is riven with a multiplicity of deep and long faults parallel or subparallel to the coast (Plate 1.2). The continuing movements of many of these faults give rise to earthquakes of low and moderate intensities.

Plate 1.4 Off the Konkan–Gujarat Coast the floor of the 3000 m deep Laxmi Basin in the Arabian Sea is spreading. The West Coast of India is thus encountering strong lateral stresses. (Reproduced with permission from Reddy, P. R. (2010). Seismic Imaging of Indian Continental and Oceanic Crust. Hyderabad: Professional Books Publisher (461 p.). Inset: Portrayal of the spreading of Laxmi Basin and Laxmi Ridge off western coast. Modified after Yatheesh, V., Bhattacharya, G. C., & Dyment, J. (2009). Early opening off Western India–Pakistan margin: The gap basin revisited. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 284, 399–408.)

In the Bay of Bengal (Plate 1.1), the Southeast Indian Ocean Ridge is spreading at the half rate of 8 mm/year. Consequently the Indian Oceanic Plate is converging towards the Malaysia–Indonesia–Thailand plate at the rate of 30 mm/year (Curray, 2005). Concomitantly, it is sliding under the Andaman–Nicobar Island Arc, as testified by the long deep Java Trench fringing the island arc and by the occurrence of large and great earthquakes far too often (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1 Global Position System (GPS) measurements in the international terrestrial reference frame show the direction in which the Indian continental plate is moving. (Modify from Banerjee, P. (2005). Interseismic geodetic motion and far-field coseismic surface displacements caused by the 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake observed from GPS data. Current Science, 88, 1491–1496.)

Northwards-Moving Indian Continent

It is a well-known fact that the Indian plate—the ocean floor and the continent together as a whole—is moving towards the mainland Asian plate at the rate of 58±4 mm/year (Freymueller et al., 1996; Catherine, 2004). Even if we consider an analysis of the velocity measurement through the GPS system located at Bengaluru (Bangalore) (Paul et al., 2001), showing that most of this convergence may be 14% slower than the rate inferred from NUVEL-1A (DeMets, Gordon, Argus, & Stein, 1994), the fact remains that Peninsular India is pressing the Asian landmass very hard (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2), and the Himalaya is bearing the brunt of this inexorable pressure. Understandably, the great mountain arc is considerably strained, and therefore it expresses its inner tectonic tumult time and again, sometimes with great fury (Plate 1.3).

A large part of the India–Asia convergence is stored as elastic strain in the structural framework of the Himalaya, the Indo-Myanmar Border Ranges, the Sulaiman–Kirthar Ranges, and in the fractured Peninsular India itself (Valdiya, 2010, 2016). The stress is particularly strong where different crustal blocks impinge one against the other. The long, deep faults of antiquity, such as those defining the boundaries of geological terranes and the horsts and grabens (Plate 1.2) experience greater stress and are therefore reactivated sometimes or other.

One such terrane-defining belt is represented by the Himalayan Frontal Fault, also described as Main Himalayan Thrust, along the foot of the Siwalik Range. Representing the surface manifestation of the thrust that separates or detaches the hardened basement from the Himalayan succession of rocks, it is really a series of variously inclined rupture planes along which the Peninsular Indian crust is presently sliding or slipping under the Himalayan province (Fig. 1.2). The rate at which the crust is moving varies from 10–12 mm/year in the Sikkim sector, 10–18 mm/year in the central sector, and 14–20 mm/year in the western sector (Banerjee & Burgmann, 2001; Jade, 2005). In the Salt Range sector (Pakistan), the rate of sliding is 10 mm/year.

Fig. 1.2 Variable rate of slipping of the Peninsular Indian plate under the Himalaya, as determined from GPS measurements. (Modified from Thakur, V. C. (2013). Active tectonics of Himalayan Frontal Fault system. International Journal of Earth Sciences (Geographische Rundschau), 102(7), 1791–1810.)

In northeastern India, the continental Indian plate is obliquely underthrusting the Myanmar microplate of the Asian plate at the rate of 33±6 mm/year (Khan, 2004; Sahu et al., 2006). The GPS investigation shows (Figs 1.1 and 1.2) that the slip rate of the Indian plate varies from sector to sector, from 1.5 to 50 mm/year (Jade et al., 2007; Steckler, Akhter, & Seeber, 2008).

The uncommon sedimentary structure seismite formed by soft-sediment deformation resulting from strong ground shaking, indicate that a large number of earthquakes with magnitudes of 8 or higher have occurred in the past, including the early Holocene in the foothills related to or in close proximity of the Himalayan Frontal Fault. Likewise, northeastern India and the Kachchh region in the west are far too often shaken by high-magnitude earthquakes. Both the fault-ridden foothill belt of the Sahyadri and the northern flank of the Satpura cut by the Narmada rift valley are not free from tectonic ferment.

Accommodation of Continental Convergence

One would like to know why the southern part of Peninsular India, described as a stable continental region, is experiencing low and moderate tremors and associated geomorphic development. This is because the megacontinent Asia is resisting the push of the northwards-moving Indian landmass. Only one-third of the Indian plate velocity of nearly 55–60 mm/year is accommodated by the faults of the Himalaya. Another one-third is accommodated by those of the Tibetan Plateau, so that the remaining one-third of the continental convergence is per force accommodated by the rupture planes within Peninsular India, an assemblage of composite consolidated bodies of great antiquity. Analysis of GPS measurements done in recent years clearly shows how this is happening: The velocity of the Indian plate is 55 mm/year in the Maldives within the Arabian Sea, 54 mm/year at Bengaluru in southern India, 51 mm/year at Hyderabad, 48 mm/year at Bhopal in central India, 46 mm/year at Delhi in northern India, 45.75 mm/year at Chamba in Himachal Lesser Himalaya, 36.64 mm/year at Suku up in the high Himalaya, and 32 mm/year at Leh in the India–Asia junction in Ladakh (Malay Mukul, personal communication, 2017).

This accommodation is manifest in the reactivation of faults and shear zones that were formed millions of year ago. The reactivation of older faults and the formation of new ones brought about geomorphic modification and the formation of new landforms even as the ground shook, whether mildly or moderately.

The tectonic movements that we are now witnessing are the continuation of the crustal processes that have occurred since India separated from Gondwanaland. The breaking away of the Indian landmass from Madagascar 86 to 90 million years ago initiated a new cycle of volcanism, structural deformation, and granitic activity as the drifting India lurched northwards and eventually docked with Asia. The consequence was spectacular—the emergence of the Himalaya. This happened in several phases, with each phase bringing about severe deformation, widespread magmatism, and metamorphism and radical geomorphic changes. The spectacular and striking changes entailed the uplift of the orogen and sinking of the crust in its frontal part, giving rise to a great depression, subsequently filled up by fluvial–alluvial sediments and eventually turning into the Sindhu–Ganga–Brahmaputra Plains, also called Indo-Gangetic Plains.

Neotectonism

Following the evolution of the Himalaya and the Sindhu–Ganga–Brahmaputra depression, ‘the crustal changes that shaped the geology of the terrain essentially through vertically directed movements along lineaments (deep fractures)’ according to A.B. Roy (personal communication, 2014) may be considered neotectonism. This implies that all the changes that took place in the Late Quaternary are the consequences of neotectonism. As Keller and Pinter (1996) state, neotectonics involve all those tectonic processes that cause deformation of the Earth's crust ‘on a time scale of significance to human society’—those that bring about ‘disruption of society within a period of several decades to several hundred years—the time period for which we plan the lifetimes of buildings and important facilities such as dams and power plants’.

Those who live in the shadow of the fears of natural hazards like to know when and where violent earth processes will occur. For this purpose and for the prediction of tectonic events, ‘it is imperative that the scale of the time period of events has to be much longer—at least several thousands to tens of thousands of years’ (Keller & Pinter, 1996). In order to understand neotectonics and the nature of the active faults responsible for sudden tectonic events, as well as to formulate a strategy for coping with the resulting hazards, the period of occurrence of events has to be of the order of millions of years. In this work the focus is more on what happened in the nearly eleven-and-half thousand years of the Holocene Epoch and what is happening in the present.

Indicators of Neotectonism

A number of clear indicators help reveal the history of neotectonic resurgence of any area under study. Among them are:

(1) Recurrent seismicity, implying rupturing at the surface of land and/or underground due to snapping of rock masses and the attendant displacement on the rupture plane(s).

(2) Migration or slow shifting of stream courses following ground tilting due to uplift or subsidence of the land. As a stream shifts, it abandons its older channel and carves out a new one (Fig. 1.3).

Fig. 1.3 Uplift or subsidence of a part of the land causes tilting of the ground surface, triggering migration or shifting sideway of a meandering river. The abandoned channel—called palaeochannel —is now represented by relics of meander loops, often serving as ponds. (Modified from Keller, E. A., & Pinter, N. (1996). Active tectonics: Earthquakes, uplift and landscape. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.)

(3) Abrupt swerving or deflection of streams subsequent to the establishment of their drainages. This implies sudden availability of a less resistant option, such as the availability of a track that is easier to erode and carve out a channel in it. This is attributable to the formation of a fault or reactivation of an older fault (Fig. 1.4).

Fig. 1.4 A fault line is a zone of softer materials, such as crushed or pulverized rocks, which are easy to erode and carve out a course. In the left part of the diagram , a stream is offset rightwards along the fault line. In the right part , another stream abruptly swerves rightwards; it is dextrally deflected. A straight scarp—with a planar face and a bench in front of it (left side)—defines the fault along which the upper (northern) side has risen up. The fault zone is characterized by landforms such as a sagpond , pressure ridge , and shutter ridge . (Modified from Keller, E. A., & Pinter, N. (1996). Active tectonics: Earthquakes, uplift and landscape. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.)

(4) Dissection and displacement—horizontal vertical, or both—of subrecent or recent geomorphic features, such as talus cones, landslide debris cones (colluvial cones), alluvial fans, fluvial terraces, etc. (Fig. 1.5). The displacement is commonly accompanied by tilting and/or warping of the layered deposits.

Fig. 1.5 (A) A fault has cut a colluvial cone into two parts. Movement on the fault plane is responsible for its toe being lifted up. (B) Active faulting has displaced upwards the lower part of the colluvial fan.

(5) Formation of a linear scarp—or a number of escarpments with intervening terraces called benches—with a remarkably straight disposition, the face of the scarp being planar (Fig. 1.4) or triangular (Fig. 1.6).

Fig. 1.6 Triangular facet of the scarps formed due to faulting down of the frontal part of the spurs related to a hill range. Absence of gullies or even furrows on the fault facets indicates that the scarps were formed not long ago. (Modified from Keller, E. A., & Pinter, N. (1996). Active tectonics: Earthquakes, uplift and landscape. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.)

(6) Linear distribution of springs, seepages, and ponds due to subsidence. Sagging down of ground gives rise to sagponds (Fig. 1.4). Formation of elongate or linear bulges in recent deposits are called pressure ridges (Fig. 1.4). These bulges are also called shutter ridges where they block the passage of the tributary stream flow. All these features are related to faulting accompanied by movements on fault planes.

(7) Ponding of streams or rivers (Fig. 1.7) due to blockage resulting from the downstream block rising up and forming an impediment (i.e., a barrier) or the upstream block sinking to form a depression (Fig. 1.7). The blockage leads to the development of a lake in which sediments start accumulating. Effacement or draining out of the lake culminates in the emergence of a of a paleolake represented by dominant clay and mud deposits.

Fig. 1.7 (A) and (B) Bulging of the ground due to thrusting up of the downstream block created a barrier resulting in the blockage—the ponding of the river and formation of a lake. In order to open the course of the river, the overflowing water starts cutting down at a rapid pace into its bed across the uplifted block, leading to formation of a gorge or canyon. (C) A river flowing along the strike of the fault is ponded at two places due to movement on the fault. ((A) Modified from Keller, E. A., & Pinter, N. (1996). Active tectonics: Earthquakes, uplift and landscape. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.)

(8) Episodic uplift in the region of valleys of rivers lined with terraces of gravel and sand deposits results in the evolution of successions of terraces at different elevations with respect to river beds, giving rise to a type of ‘landing stair’ topography or stepped terraces (Fig. 1.8).

Fig. 1.8 Two terraces at different elevation levels with respect to the riverbed, giving rise to a stepped or ‘landing stair’ geomorphology, the terraces T 1 and T 2 implying that there were two phases of uplift experienced in the river valley.

(9) Change in the altimetric elevation of geomorphic or sedimentary features across a fault.

(10) Sinking and burial of archaeological sites including harbours, seaports, forts, temples, etc.

References☆

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Valdiya K.S. The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution (Second Edition). Switzerland, Cham, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer International Publication; 2016 (924 p.).

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Chapter 2

India: An Assemblage of Multiple Terranes

K.S. Valdiya; Jaishri Sanwal

Abstract

The geological layouts of Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are inseparably linked with that of India. The Indian subcontinent encompasses as many as nine geological terranes, each having its own distinctive lithological-petrochemical characteristics, structural architecture, and different evolutionary history. There are Archaean cratons embodying composite, consolidated, and rigid blocks; Proterozoic mobile belts of high-grade metamorphic rocks; continent-interior basins comprising slightly deformed to practically undeformed Proterozoic sediments; Permian-age elongate Gondwanic grabens and half-grabens cutting across the cratons; a Cretaceous Volcanic Province covering vast swathes of land in western and central India; Mesozoic–Cenozoic sediments piled up on gradually sinking continental margins; a Cenozoic Himalayan Mobile Belt representing a youthful orogen formed due to the docking of India with Asia; flysch-dominated obduction complexes forming the much-faulted arcuate mountain ranges along the India–Myanmar border; and an oceanic trench-defined island-arc complex in the Bay of Bengal.

Keywords

Cratons; Mobile belts; Terrane-defining tectonic zones; Continent-interior sedimentary basins; Gondwana graben-half-grabens; Volcanic province; Dyke swarms; Pericratonic sedimentary basins; Obduction complex; Island-arc complex; Subduction zone; Oceanic trench

The geological layouts of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are inseparably linked with the framework of India. The lands of these countries have gone through the same evolutionary processes as India has. The larger India is virtually a continent (Valdiya, 2010, 2016) and comprises as many as nine major geological terranes, each having its own distinctive lithological-petrochemical characteristics and structural architecture, as well as contrasting physiographic and evolutionary histories (Fig. 2.1, Plate 2.1).

Fig. 2.1 Schematic map showing nine principal geological terranes of the Indian continent, each with its own distinctive lithological-petrological characteristics, structural architecture, contrasting physiographic and evolutionary history. (Modified from Valdiya, K. S. (2010). The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution. New Delhi: Macmillan (816 p.); Valdiya, K. S. (2016). The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution (2nd ed.). Switzerland, Cham, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer International Publication (924 p.).)

Plate 2.1 Shaded relief map showing the varied geomorphic terrains with contrasting landforms and landscapes of the Indian subcontinent. (Reproduced with permission from: AridOcean/Shutterstock. Annotation by authors.)

Cratons of the Peninsular Indian Shield

The four composite consolidated and rigid blocks of Archaean antiquity in Peninsular India are commonly described as a shield. Remaining practically undeformed by compressional tectonics for very long geological periods, these blocks are known as cratons (Fig. 2.2). The Dharwar Craton embodies the larger part of Karnataka and the surrounding areas of neighbouring states in southern India. The Bastar Craton in central India covers the larger part of Chhattisgarh and adjoining parts of Odisha (Orissa) and Madhya Pradesh. In eastern India is the Singhbhum Craton, comprising the larger part of the Jharkhand and the adjacent part of Odisha and Chhattisgarh and Bengal. The Bundelkhand Craton embraces the Budelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh–Uttar Pradesh and adjoining parts of Rajasthan.

Fig. 2.2 Four cratons of the Indian Shield are separated from each other by ancient mobile belts and grabens. The cratons embody the nuclei of the continental crust. (Based on Valdiya, K. S. (2010). The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution. New Delhi: Macmillan (816 p.); Valdiya, K. S. (2016). The Making of India: Geodynamic Evolution (2nd ed.). Switzerland, Cham, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer International Publication (924 p.). (Base map from Amante, C., & Eakins, B. W. (2009). ETOPOI 1 Arc-minute global relief model: procedures, data sources and analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24 (19