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Brief Report for Meers fault, northwestern section (Class A) No. 1031a
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citation for this record: Crone, A.J., compiler, 1994, Fault number 1031a, Meers fault, northwestern section, in Quaternary fault and fold database of the United States: U.S. Geological Survey website, http://earthquakes.usgs.gov/regional/qfaults, accessed 11/24/2009 06:13 AM.
| Synopsis | General: Fault originally mapped in about the late 1930's, and scarp was considered to be an erosionally exhumed fault-line scarp. The scarp, formed on late Quaternary deposits, was first recognized by M. Charles Gilbert in the early 1980's during field studies of the igneous rocks exposed in the nearby Wichita Mountains (Gilbert, 1983 #671; 1983 #672). Paleoseismic studies of the fault indicate a temporal clustering of events in the late Quaternary. These studies have established the occurrence of two well-dated, late Holocene events, and a preceding event that occurred middle Pleistocene time or earlier. Sections: This fault has 2 sections. The two sections described here are based on the distinctly different surficial expression of the fault along each section. A conspicuous, continuous Holocene scarp is present along a 26-km-long section of the fault, but low-sun angle photography suggests that the Holocene rupture along this section may be as much as 37 km long (Ramelli and others, 1987 #668; Ramelli and Slemmons, 1990 #665). This 26- or possibly 37-km-long section is considered as section "b" in this compilation. A poorly studied section is located northwest of section "b", and is referred to as section "a" in this compilation. Knowledge and information on this northwesterly section is based solely on work by Cetin (1990 #658; 1992 #674). The actual length and details of the subsurface extent of the Meers fault are not well known, but subsurface (Harlton, 1951 #670; 1963 #667) and magnetic (Jones-Cecil and Crone, 1989 #663; Jones-Cecil, in press #673) data show that the fault extends for tens of kilometers to the northwest and southeast of the Quaternary scarp (section b). Other sections of the fault may exist at depth that are not expressed in Quaternary deposits. |
| County(s) and State(s) | COMANCHE COUNTY COUNTY, OKLAHOMA KIOWA COUNTY COUNTY, OKLAHOMA |
| AMS sheet(s) | Lawton |
| Physiographic province(s) | CENTRAL LOWLAND |
| Length (km) | This section is 18 km of a total fault length of 54 km. |
| Average strike | N67°W (for section) versus N°64W (for whole fault) |
| Sense of movement | Sinistral |
| Dip Direction | SW; V; NE |
| Historic earthquake | |
| Most recent prehistoric deformation | Quaternary (<1.6 Ma) |
| Slip-rate category | Less than 0.2 mm/yr |
| Date and Compiler(s) | 1994 Anthony J. Crone, U.S. Geological Survey |
