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Wiley InterScience

Ground Water

Ground Water

Volume 33 Issue 4, Pages 561 - 569

Published Online: 4 Aug 2005

Journal compilation © 2010 National Ground Water Association



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Roberts Rift, Canyonlands, Utah, A Natural Hydraulic Fracture Caused by Comet or Asteroid Impact
Peter W. Huntoon a Eugene M. Shoemaker b
  a Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071.   b U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001.
Copyright 1995 National Ground Water Association

ABSTRACT

AbstractReferences

The impact that created Upheaval crater in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, is invoked here as the source for energy that simultaneously caused Roberts rift. However, no temporal linkage has been proven between the impact and rifting events.

Roberts rift lies between 22 and 32 km northeast of the Upheaval impact crater on a subradial trend. The fissure contains clasts that were carried as much as 1,000 m upward from Paleozoic sources into the Mesozoic section.

A plausible model for both the rifting and clast movement involves incremental loading of overpressured fluid compartments in the Pennsylvanian Paradox section and attendant hydraulic fracturing of the overlying confining strata during the impact event. The clasts were proppants entrained in upward moving fluids that originated from overpressured aquifers in the Pennsylvanian section or materials eroded from the fissure walls.

Alteration halos and mineralization along the fissure reveal that there was upward leakage of reducing fluids from the overpressured zones following opening of the fissure. The fissure infillings became cemented with time, thus reducing fissure permeabilities to negligible.


Received March 1994, revised August 1994 and November 1994, accepted October 1994.

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)
10.1111/j.1745-6584.1995.tb00311.x About DOI

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