• journal_title：Geology
• Contributor：Emmanuelle Boutonnet ; Philippe Hervé Leloup ; Caroline Sassier ; Véronique Gardien ; Yanick Ricard
• Publisher：Geological Society of America
• Date：2013-08-01
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• Identifier：10.1130/G33723.1
• journal_abbrev：Geology
• issn：0091-7613
• volume：41
• issue：8
• firstpage：819
• section：Articles

Quantification of strain localization in the continental lithosphere is hindered by the lack of reliable deformation rate measurements in the deep crust. Quartz-strain-rate-metry (QSR) is a convenient tool for performing such measurements once calibrated. We achieve this calibration by identifying the best piezometer-rheological law pairs that yield a strain rate in agreement with that measured on the same outcrop by a more direct method taken as a reference. When applied to two major continental strike-slip shear zones, the Ailao Shan–Red River (ASRR; southwest China) and the Karakorum (northwest India), the calibrated QSR highlights across-strike strain rate variations, from <1 × 10⁻¹⁵ s^-1 in zones where strain is weak, to >1 × 10⁻¹³ s^-1 in zones where it is localized. Strain rates integrated across the shear zones imply fast fault slip rates on the order of 1.1 cm yr^-1 (Karakorum) and 4 cm yr^-1 (ASRR), proving strong strain localization in these strike-slip continental shear zones.