Geophysical studies of basin structure along the eastern front of the Sierra Nevada, California

Abstract

A seismic and gravity survey along the eastern front of the Sierra Nevada, California, between southern Owens Valley and the Garlock fault, outlines a series of basins with maximum depths ranging from 5,000 to 9,000 ft. These basins follow the front of the Sierra Nevada in a continuous chain with one interruption of about 10 miles near Little Lake. The gravity anomalies indicate that the basins are bounded by a series of high-angle faults rather than a single large fault. The seismic velocities in the basin deposits appear to correlate with the stratigraphy of the section exposed in the El Paso Mountains. A comparison of Bouguer anomalies with seismic depths indicates a density contrast of 0.35 g/cc in basins less than 3,000 ft deep, and an average but widely varying density contrast of 0.25 g/cc in basins 4,000 to 8,000 ft deep. A digital-computer program for automatic computation of basin depths from gravity anomalies was evaluated and found to be useful in this type of analysis. Changes in the depth to the Mohorovicic discontinuity cannot produce regional gradients as large as the regional gradients observed in the area of the survey. Either structure on an intermediate crustal boundary or lateral changes in crustal densities, or a combination of these, is required to explain the gravity data.