Impact of Timanian thrusts on the Phanerozoic tectonic history of Svalbard

Presentation at "Friday seminar" at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 13.09.2019.Despite more than a century of investigation, the relationship between basement rocks throughout the Svalbard Archipelago is still a mystery. Though these rocks display similar geochronological ages, they show significantly different metamorphic grades and structures. Thus far, Svalbard was believed to be composed of three terranes of rocks formed hundreds–thousands of kilometers apart and accreted in the mid-Paleozoic. New evidence from seismic, gravimetric, aeromagnetic, seismological, bathymetric, and field data show that these terranes might have already been accreted in the late Neoproterozoic. Notably, the data show that at least three–four, crustal-scale, WNW–ESE-striking thrust systems crosscut Spitsbergen and merge with Timanian thrusts in the northern Barents Sea and northwestern Russia. These thrusts were reactivated as sinistral-reverse oblique-slip faults and partly folded during the Caledonian and Eurekan orogenies, and reactivated as sinistral-normal faults during Devonian–Mississippian extensional collapse, thus offsetting N–S-trending Caledonian grain and post-Caledonian basins. The presence of these faults explains the juxtaposition of basement rocks of seemingly different origin throughout the Svalbard Archipelago, the distribution of Mississippian rocks and Early Cretaceous intrusions along a WNW–ESE-trending axis in central Spitsbergen, the west vergence of Cenozoic folds in Devonian rocks in central–northern Spitsbergen (previously ascribed to Late Devonian Ellesmerian contraction), the arch shape of the Cenozoic West Spitsbergen Fold-and-Thrust Belt in Brøggerhalvøya, and the strike and location of transform faults west of Spitsbergen. Further implications of this work might be that the tectonic plates constituting present-day Norwegian Arctic regions (Laurentia and Baltica) have retained their current geometry and alignment for the past 600 Ma, that the Timanian Orogeny and associated WNW–ESE-striking faults extend from northwestern Russia to Svalbard, and, possibly, to Greenland and Arctic Canada, and that the transport of Svalbard from next to Greenland in the early Cenozoic to its present position (ca. 400 km southwards) might have been accommodated exclusively by break-up and displacement along transform faults (strike-slip movements), and by top-SSW thrusting and folding (horizontal shortening) along inherited Timanian grain instead of dextral strike-slip movement along the De Geer Zone

Devonian core complex exhumation and Cenozoic decollements as alternatives to the Ellesmerian Orogeny

Poster presentation at ARCEx Annual Conference 2018, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, 09.10. - 11.10.18. https://arcex.no/arcex-2018/. The Ellesmerian Orogeny (Piepjohn et al., 2000) is a short-lived contractional–transpressional event that occurred in the Late Devonian–Mississippian, i.e., after Devonian collapse of the Caledonides and prior to Carboniferous rifting. Thus far, this episode of contraction–transpression was required to explain the presence of undeformed Carboniferous–Permian sedimentary rocks on top of folded Upper Devonian strata in central Spitsbergen. The orogen is poorly constrained in other parts of the Arctic due to the lack/poor exposure of Devonian–Carboniferous sedimentary rocks (Rippington et al., 2010). We present an alternative model involving core complex exhumation through continuous, decreasing, Devonian–Carboniferous extension during the collapse of the Caledonides, and (partial) strain decoupling during Cenozoic transpression in Svalbard

The Billefjorden Fault Zone north of Spitsbergen: a major terrane boundary?

The Billefjorden Fault Zone is a major terrane boundary in the Norwegian Arctic. The fault separates basement rocks of Svalbard’s north-eastern and north-western terranes that recorded discrete Precambrian tectonothermal histories and were accreted, intensely deformed and metamorphosed during the Caledonian Orogeny. Although the fault represents a major, crustal-scale tectonic boundary, its north-ward extent is not well constrained. The present short contribution addresses this issue and presents new seismic mapping of structures and rock units north of Wijdefjorden, where the Billefjorden Fault Zone may continue. This study shows that there is no evidence for major faulting of the top-basement reflection, and therefore, that the Billefjorden Fault Zone may die out within Wijdefjorden–Austfjorden, step ≥ 20 km laterally, or be invisible on the presented seismic data. Seismic data also suggest that Caledonian basement rocks in Ny-Friesland (north-eastern terrane) are not significantly different from basement rocks below the Devonian Graben in Andrée Land (north-western terrane). Potential implica-tions include the absence of a major terrane boundary in northern Spitsbergen

On the kinematic detection of accreted streams in the Gaia era: a cautionary tale

The $\Lambda$CDM cosmological scenario predicts that our Galaxy should contain hundreds of stellar streams at the solar vicinity, fossil relics of the merging history of the Milky Way and more generally of the hierarchical growth of galaxies. Because of the mixing time scales in the inner Galaxy, it has been claimed that these streams should be difficult to detect in configuration space but can still be identifiable in kinematic-related spaces like the energy/angular momenta spaces, E-Lz and Lperp-Lz, or spaces of orbital/velocity parameters. By means of high-resolution, dissipationless N-body simulations, containing between 25$\times10^6$ and 35$\times10^6$ particles, we model the accretion of a series of up to four 1:10 mass ratio satellites then up to eight 1:100 satellites and we search systematically for the signature of these accretions in these spaces. In all spaces considered (1) each satellite gives origin to several independent overdensities; (2) overdensities of multiple satellites overlap; (3) satellites of different masses can produce similar substructures; (4) the overlap between the in-situ and the accreted population is considerable everywhere; (5) in-situ stars also form substructures in response to the satellite(s) accretion. These points are valid even if the search is restricted to kinematically-selected halo stars only. As we are now entering the 'Gaia era', our results warn that an extreme caution must be employed before interpreting overdensities in any of those spaces as evidence of relics of accreted satellites. Reconstructing the accretion history of our Galaxy will require a substantial amount of accurate spectroscopic data, that, complemented by the kinematic information, will possibly allow us to (chemically) identify accreted streams and measure their orbital properties. (abridged)Comment: Accepted on A&A. A high-resolution version of the paper is available at http://aramis.obspm.fr/~paola/ELZ/Elz.pd

A network approach to studying research programmes : mobilizing and coordinating public responses to HIV/AIDS

Based on the analysis of the Medical and Public Health Research programme (Commission of the European Communities), the paper shows how new scientific communities are created in response to the HIV/AIDS problem. We analyze how actors are mobilized (three mobilization modes : public impetus, scientists'initiative, scientists' initiative with public networking) and how their work is coordinated. We defend the hypothesis that these new scientific communities are flexible cooperation networks. In the case of AIDS research, there are only a limited number of network types (the data collection structure, the forum, the thematic partition with harmonization of research practices, the starred around a central facility). The coordination of these scientific cooperative networks passes through fixed and circulating intermediaries. The management of these intermediaries is a major activity for involved actors. thus, our aim is not to study the wider social context, but to analyze networking in response to policy initiatives. (Résumé d'auteur

Creep motion of a model frictional system

We report on the dynamics of a model frictional system submitted to minute external perturbations. The system consists of a chain of sliders connected through elastic springs that rest on an incline. By introducing cyclic expansions and contractions of the springs we observe a reptation of the chain. We account for the average reptation velocity theoretically. The velocity of small systems exhibits a series of plateaus as a function of the incline angle. Due to elastic e ects, there exists a critical amplitude below which the reptation is expected to cease. However, rather than a full stop of the creep, we observe in numerical simulations a transition between a continuous-creep and an irregular-creep regime when the critical amplitude is approached. The latter transition is reminiscent of the transition between the continuous and the irregular compaction of granular matter submitted to periodic temperature changes

The distribution of helium 3 in the deep Western and Southern Indian Ocean

Almost a decade after the Geochemical Ocean Sections Study Indian Expedition, the new deep 3He data from the INDIGO program give a further insight into the distribution of this tracer in the Indian Ocean. This distribution exhibits some major features related on one hand to a hydrothermal 3He input in the Gulf of Aden and on the Mid-Indian Ocean Ridge, and on the other to the origin of the water masses and to the characteristics of the deep circulation. (D'après résumé d'auteur

Pattern formation in flocking models: A hydrodynamic description

International audienceWe study in detail the hydrodynamic theories describing the transition to collective motion in polar active matter, exemplified by the Vicsek and active Ising models. Using a simple phenomenological theory, we show the existence of an infinity of propagative solutions, describing both phase and microphase separation, that we fully characterize. We also show that the same results hold specifically in the hydrodynamic equations derived in the literature for the active Ising model and for a simplified version of the Vicsek model. We then study numerically the linear stability of these solutions. We show that stable ones constitute only a small fraction of them, which, however, includes all existing types. We further argue that, in practice, a coarsening mechanism leads towards phase-separated solutions. Finally, we construct the phase diagrams of the hydrodynamic equations proposed to qualitatively describe the Vicsek and active Ising models and connect our results to the phenomenology of the corresponding microscopic models

High Dynamic Range Spectral Imaging Pipeline For Multispectral Filter Array Cameras

Spectral filter arrays imaging exhibits a strong similarity with color filter arrays. This permits us to embed this technology in practical vision systems with little adaptation of the existing solutions. In this communication, we define an imaging pipeline that permits high dynamic range (HDR)-spectral imaging, which is extended from color filter arrays. We propose an implementation of this pipeline on a prototype sensor and evaluate the quality of our implementation results on real data with objective metrics and visual examples. We demonstrate that we reduce noise, and, in particular we solve the problem of noise generated by the lack o