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Partial 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 03/16/2009 12:53 PM.

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
Reliability of location	Poor Compiled at 1:100,000 scale.
Geologic setting	The fault is one of at least four west- to northwest-trending faults that form the Frontal Wichita fault system (Harlton, 1951 #670; 1963 #667; 1972 #666), which is the boundary between the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks in the Anadarko basin to the northeast and the Cambrian intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks that comprise the Wichita Mountains to the southwest. Faults in the frontal fault system have a cumulative down-to-the-northeast throw of as much as 10 km. In contrast, the Quaternary scarp indicates a down-to-the-south-west sense of throw on the fault. Uncertain amounts of lateral slip have probably occurred on many faults in the frontal fault system; estimates range from a few kilometers to as much as 120 km. The location and trend of the fault system were probably controlled by zones of crustal weakness that developed during formation of the Southern Oklahoma aulacogen in latest Precambrian to Early Cambrian time.
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
Paleoseismology studies	Cetin (1992 #674) examined natural exposures along the banks of Saddle Mountain Creek, Longhorn Mountain Creek, and Sugar Creek and their tributaries for evidence of deformation and possible faulting. He mapped seven exposures in detail, but in the 1992 report, he only discussed three exposures, all of which are in Kiowa County: 1) a site on a branch of Saddle Mountain Creek (NE, SW, Sec. 30, T. 5 N., R. 14 W.), 2) on Longhorn Creek (NW, NE, Sec. 23, T. 5 N., R. 14 W.), and 3) on Sugar Creek (SW, NW, Sec 16, T. 5 N., R. 14 W.). At these sites, he reports folding in Paleozoic rocks that are commonly undeformed elsewhere, cracks in the rocks that are filled with Quaternary sediments, and overthickened A horizons on the downthrown side of the fault.
Geomorphic expression	There is no geomorphic expression.
Age of faulted surficial deposits	late Holocene?? (Cetin, 1990 #658).
Historic earthquake
Most recent prehistoric deformation	Quaternary (<1.6 Ma)
Recurrence interval
Slip-rate category	Less than 0.2 mm/yr
Date and Compiler(s)	1994 Anthony J. Crone, U.S. Geological Survey
References	#658 Cetin, H., 1990, The northwest continuation of the Meers fault and its tectonic activity in southwestern Oklahoma: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, v. 22, p. 3. #674 Cetin, H., 1992, The northwest extension of the Meers fault in southwestern Oklahoma, in Sharma, S., ed., Proceedings of the 28th symposium on engineering geology and geotechnical engineering:, 28th Symposium on Engineering Geology and Geotechnical Engineering, Boise, Idaho, April 1-3, 1992, Proceedings, p. 43-58. #4359 Crone, A.J., and Wheeler, R.L., 2000, Data for Quaternary faults, liquefaction features, and possible tectonic features in the Central and Eastern United States, east of the Rocky Mountain front: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 00-260, 332 p. #670 Harlton, B.H., 1951, Faults in sedimentary part of Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma: Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, v. 35, p. 988-999. #667 Harlton, B.H., 1963, Frontal Wichita fault system of southwestern Oklahoma: Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, v. 47, p. 1552-1580. #666 Harlton, B.H., 1972, Faulted fold belts of southern Anadarko basin adjacent to Frontal Wichitas: Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, v. 56, p. 1544-1551. #673 Jones-Cecil, M., 1995, Total-field aeromagnetic and derivative maps of the Lawton area, southwestern Oklahoma: U.S. Geological Survey Geophysical Investigations Series Map GP-998-A, 2 sheets, scale 1:100,000. #663 Jones-Cecil, M., and Crone, A.J., 1989, Constraints on the Anadarko basin-Wichita uplift boundary interpreted from aeromagnetic data, in Johnson, K.S., ed., Anadarko basin symposium, 1988: Oklahoma Geological Survey Circular 90, p. 228-232. #668 Ramelli, A.R., Slemmons, D.B., and Brocoum, S.J., 1987, The Meers fault--Tectonic activity in southwestern Oklahoma: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission NUREG/CR-4852, 25 p. #665 Ramelli, A.R., and Slemmons, D.B., 1990, Implications of the Meers fault on seismic potential in the Central United States, in Krinitzsky, E.L., and Slemmons, D.B., eds., Neotectonics in earthquake evaluation: Geological Society of America Reviews in Engineering Geology, v. 8, p. 59-75. #675 Swan, F.H., Wesling, J.R., Hanson, K.A., Kelson, K.I., and Perman, R.C., 1993 written commun., Draft report--Investigation of the Quaternary structural and tectonic character of the Meers fault (southwestern Oklahoma): Technical report to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C., under Contract NRC-04-87-007, July 1993, 104 p., 3 pls.