INVESTIGATING PALEOZOIC TECTONIC DEFORMATION OF THE WESTERN HIGHLAND RIM, TENNESSEE

The Western Highland Rim (WHR) is a physiographic region of Tennessee located between the Nashville Dome to the east and the Mississippi Embayment to the west. This region is tectonically intriguing because it is situated inside the bend of the Appalachian-Ouachita orogen along the eastern margin of the Laurentian craton. This region has experienced pulses of deformation, both due to far-field stresses and local stresses. In the Paleozoic era, the Appalachian (east of WHR) and Ouachita (south of WHR) orogenies were both active and applying compressional far-field stresses, causing deformation in the rocks of the WHR at that time. The different deformational structures present in these rocks today may tell the shortening direction history of these tectonic stresses, how many pulses of deformation occurred, zones of concentrated deformation, and whether or not the deformation is resultant of Paleozoic far-field stresses. In order to understand what the structures represents, a full analysis of the mesoscale structures in the region will be conducted. Measuring deformational structures in the exposed Paleozoic rocks along the Tennessee River, analyzing the data with stereographic projections and rose diagrams, and plotting the structures in ArcGIS will result in a map showing the regional tectonic deformational history of the Western Highland Rim. Cross-cutting relationships of these structures, if found, will further provide timing of Appalachian versus Ouachita deformation in particular areas within the WHR.