Coastal structure of the continental margin, northwest Peru and southwest Ecuador

Resumen

With the exception of the lower continental slope, or inner wall of the Peru Trench, normal faulting characteristic of extensional tectonics predominates in the shallow structure from the outer rise on the Nazca plate, across the trench, the contenental margin, the Coastal province, and into the High Cordillera province of the Andes of northern Peru. Marine seismic reflection and gravity traverses are used to trace the major basins, horsts, and large faults seaward from where they have been mapped on land and in the subsurface. Although these large-scale structures can be traced geophysically, neither single-channel nor multichannel seismic records reveal the wealth of detail of block faults and olistostrome-like low-angle slides known from subsurface studies of the onshore and offshore oil fields in the fore-arc basin along the coast at Talara, Peru.