HIGH-RESOLUTION 3D SURFACE MODELING OF FOLD-THRUST SYSTEMS: INDIO MOUNTAINS, WEST TEXAS

Fold-and-thrust belts often are complicated by out-of-sequence thrust faulting and inverted basins display these structures particularly often due to reactivation of original normal faults as well as complex topographic evolution. The Indio Mountains lie along the northern margin of the Chihuahua trough which formed as a mid-Cretaceous extensional basin and was subsequently shortened during the Laramide orogeny, making the Indio Mountains an exceptional site for studies of structures produced by large-scale basin inversion. This study examines the subsurface structures in a complexly-imbricated thrust window developed along the paleo-rift basin margin. This study examines the basement structure that produced the surface geology through geophysical modeling. The surface geology is sufficiently complex, however, that conventional 2D mapping has insufficient resolution to constrain the geology. Thus, we used a drone to obtain aerial imagery to develop a high-resolution 3D surface model using Structure from Motion photogrammetry as a basis for high resolution 3D mapping. Work is still in progress on the structural interpretation but our working hypothesis is: the structures of the area resulted from shallow layer deformation due to the Laramide, the Indio normal fault then displaced the area to lie adjacent to what was the lower thick-skinned deformation zone.