New Delhi, Oct 26: A recent study on the fault line in Ladakh region, where India and Asian Plates are joined, has been found to be tectonically active and calls for the relook into existing evolutionary models in the Himalayas zones, the Department of Science and Technology said here on Monday.
As of now, this area was considered a locked zone but the new findings could have major implications in terms of earthquake study, prediction, understanding the seismic structure of the mountain chains as well as its evolution.
A group of Scientists from Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), Dehradun, under Department of Science and Technology,have found through observations and detailed mapping of geological features that the suture zone of Himalaya that was conventionally thought to be locked is tectonically active.
They carried out the mapping of the remote regions of Ladakh that forms the most hinterland part of the Himalaya.
The geologists of WIHG have observed that sedimentary beds are tilted and thrust broken, the rivers are associated with uplifted terraces, and the bedrock shows brittle deformation that occurred at much shallower depths.
These deformed geological features were then dated in the laboratory at Dehradun using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) (method for carrying Luminescence dating of geological sediments) and data of seismicity and denudation rate reviewed.
“The combination of field and lab data suggested the region of the Indus Suture Zone (ISZ) has been neo-tectonically active since the last 78000 — 58000 years and a recent earthquake in 2010 of low magnitude 4.0 near the village of Upshi that occurred due to a thrust rupture”, the study said.
Himalaya were known to be made up of north dipping thrusts like the Main Central Thrust (MCT), the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) and the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT).
The new findings, which suggest a more remote fault at the suture zone being neo-tectonically active, could call for a serious relook into the existing evolutionary models using new techniques and a larger geological database.
