Evolution and geometry of the range front region of the
central and eastern Brooks Range

Principal Investigator: Wesley K. Wallace, Catherine L. Hanks

Participating students: Elizabeth Grischkowsky, Sabrina Trask, J. Ryan Shackleton

The northeastern Brooks Range is both younger than the main axis of the Brooks Range and displays a remarkably different structural style. The main axis of the Brooks Range is characterized by far-travelled, stacked allocthons, and rangefront consisting of closely-spaced folds and thrust faults. In contrast, the northeastern Brooks Range has no allochthons, but instead has deformed as a passive-roof duplex, with a basal thrust at depth in the preMississippian rocks and a roof thrust in a shale at the base of the overlying Ellesmerian sequence, the Mississippian Kayak Shale. As a consequence, the overlying rocks of the Ellesmerian sequence are detachment-folded by largely unbroken by thrust faults.

The rangefront of the main axis of the Brooks Range has been of increasing interest to industry. Structures in the shallower rocks are in large part controlled by deeper structures. These deep structures vary along strike, are not generally exposed and are difficult to image on seismic data. However, because deformation has continued in the northeastern Brooks Range, the eastward continuation of the rangefront of the central Brooks Range has been uplifted and exposed east of the Shaviovik front. This provides an excellent opportunity to study the geometry and kinematics of the otherwise buried rangefront structures. Of particular interest is the role stratigraphy and basement geometry may have played in along-strike variations in structural style and structural topography of the range front.

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