Geological Strain Analysis In The Murphy Belt,southern Appalachian Orogen, Georgia, Usa

300 Pages·2015·19.1 MB·English

by  Haitham M. Baggazi

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2011
Geological Strain Analysis in the Murphy
Belt,Southern Appalachian Orogen,
Georgia, USA
Haitham Baggazi
Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]
THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

GEOLOGICAL STRAIN ANALYSIS IN THE MURPHY BELT,SOUTHERN

APPALACHIAN OROGEN, GEORGIA, USA

By:
HAITHAM BAGGAZI

A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:
Fall, 2011
Haitham Baggazi defended this dissertation on August 03, 2011.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

James F. Tull
Professor Directing Dissertation

Kamal Tawfiq
University Representative

A. Leroy Odom
Committee Member

Stephen A. Kish
Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members,
and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university
requirements.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to start by thanking ALLAH (Lord of all creations) for His blessing and
guidance throughout this work and my life. This work would not have been
accomplished and came to reality without the help and support of many people who
also have helped me to gain more experiences and knowledge.
In the memory of the person I miss the most in this world, my mother, Fatima
Alhazmi, may Allah bless her soul. I really miss you and I wish time went back, so I
could be around you. I wish she were here to see me finishing my doctoral degree that
kept me away from her especially the last three years of her life. Her supports,
encouragement, patience, awesome words that I will never hear again in this life and
prayers, all will not be forgotten forever.
My deep gratitude and thanks for the best dad ever, Mohammed Baggazi. I
would like to express my respect and appreciation for your support, help, advice,
prayers and encouragement that have shaped my life and education experiences.
I believe that there are not words enough to express and show my deep and
sincere gratitude and love to my wife Rabab and my kids Mohammed and Feras. If I
spent hours and hours saying thank you and writing pages of acknowledgment, it would
not be enough to express my feelings and appreciation for your support,
encouragement, and help. Without you, I would not be able to even take a single step
toward success in my life. You all are the most important and the closest people to my
heart, I love you all.
I would like to express my deep gratitude and thank to Dr. James Tull for his
patience, cooperation, encouragements and support during the time of my doctoral
program at Florida State University. His experience in teaching and geological fieldwork
has a class of its own. Without his geological knowledge, and advice, this work would
not have been possible. I also would like to appreciate your support that helped me to
keep working during the hard time that I went through when my mother passed away.
Your thoughtful action and words when you heard of it helped and encouraged me to
keep my focus toward finishing my degree. I wish you and your family a blessed anda
great life.
My sincere thanks to my committee members Dr. Stephen Kish and Dr. A. Leroy
Odom, for their help and support. They both helped me directly and indirectly to improve
my knowledge in the field of structural geology and metamorphism during the first two
years and toward preparing for the preliminary doctoral exam.
I would like to thank Dr. Kamal Tawfiq for reviewing my dissertation and always
being willing to help me toward making this project successful.
iii
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Mark Groszos for his help
support and sharing his great knowledge and information about the Murphy belt with
me. I also would like to thank him for letting me use some of his Murphy belt samples to
obtain strain data.
I also would like to thank Dr. David Farris for his help with taking the pictures of
my thin section.
I would like to thank my brothers Abdurrahman, Thamer, and Hesham for their
supports and help. I also would like to express my deep love and gratitude to my
amazing sisters Lamia, Bothinah, Haifa, and Afnan for their love, support and
encouragement.
Many friends have insightfully influenced my education and life experiences. My
deep thanks and appreciations are due to Nabanita Raha Das, Ravi Sankar, Ondrila
Das, Luanjing ‘Cindy’ Guo, Pallov Pal, Farman Ullah, Sofia Khawaja, Clint Barineau,
Chris Holm, Nick John, Stephen Whiting, Stacie Blair, Stacie Brown, Raoul Fernandes,
Josue Gallegos, and John Pazel. I wish you all a wonderful and a successful future.
A special thank is due to Steve Whitening and John Pazel for their help during
part of my geological field trips in order to collect rock samples used in this study. Their
field skills are amazing.
I would like to thank my close friend Hussien Harbi for his encouragements,
support and making a MATLAB code that helped me making some of the data chart of
this study.
I would like to Thank my friends Tariq Almashmoum and his family, Mohsen Ben
Mansour and his family, Essam Seraj and his family, Ali Almalki and his Family for the
great and fun time that my family and I enjoyed. Their willingness to help taking care of
my family during my geological field trips is really appreciated.
I would like to thank all of the faculty and staff of the formerly named Department
of Geological Sciences. Many thanks to Tami Karl, Mary Gilmore, Necole Bowens,
Jonathan Faulkner and Sharon for their help.
I also would like to thank the USGS for their support that helped me gain a
perfect experience making a geological map for Ellijay quadrangle (EDMAP program).
This map was a perfect experience and introduction for me to the geology of this part of
the United States.
I would like to thank Dr. Kieran F. Mulchrone for his help and for having his two
wonderful software (MRL and SAPE) for free ,on his web page. Your quick response to
my emails and detail explanations about the methods are really appreciated.
I also would like to thank Dr. Treagus for the help and the detailed emails
explaining some calculations and methodology used in this study.
I would like to express my gratitude to D. M. Chew for his wonderful Exile macro
file (ESC) I used to obtain some of the results of this study.
iv
My thanks to Dr. Rod. J. Holcombe for his help and his Fry method software,
GeoFryPlots, which I used to obtain some results of this study. I would also like to thank
Prakash Rody, the publisher of the Dunnet method software, and StrainDetProgs
software that has been used in this study.
I would like to thank the Government of Saudi Arabia and the University of King
Abdul-Aziz for their financial support and scholarship that covered ten years of
education including my master and doctoral program.

v
Table of Contents

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ ix
LIST OF FIGURES ...........................................................................................................x
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... xi

1.GEOLOGIC AND TECTONIC SETTING ..................................................................... .1
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1
Murphy Belt Stratigraphic Groups and Formations ...................................................... 2
The Great Smoky Group .......................................................................................... 3
The Hiwassee River Group ...................................................................................... 4
The Mineral Bluff Group ........................................................................................... 6
Structural Geology ....................................................................................................... 8
Murphy Syncline and other fold phases: .................................................................. 9
Strain in the Murphy Belt Metaconglomerate ............................................................. 11

2.METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 18
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 18
Statistical Means........................................................................................................ 19
R/Ø Technique .......................................................................................................... 20
f
Fry’s Method .............................................................................................................. 21

3.SAMPLING AND LABWORK ..................................................................................... 23
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 23
Great Smokey Group Samples .................................................................................. 23
Mineral Bluff Group Samples ..................................................................................... 24
Software .................................................................................................................... 24
Corel Draw 4X ........................................................................................................ 25
Semi-automatic Parameter Extraction (SAPE) ....................................................... 25
The Excel Spreadsheet of Chew (ESC) ................................................................. 25
MRL 1.0 .................................................................................................................. 26
Rf/Phi 1.0 ............................................................................................................... 26
Rf/Phi Dunnet 1969 (Prakash Rody) ...................................................................... 27
GeoFryPlots 3.1 (R.J. Holocombe) ........................................................................ 27

4.CORRELATIONS AND RESULTS .............................................................................. 35
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 35
Correlations ............................................................................................................... 36
ESC vs. MM ........................................................................................................... 37
ESC vs. MRL.......................................................................................................... 37
MM vs. MRL ........................................................................................................... 37
R/Ø-based-methods vs. GeoFryPlots .................................................................... 38
f
vi
R/Ø averages vs. Rf/Ø of Dunnet 1969 method .................................................... 38
f
Great Smoky Group Strain Analysis Results ............................................................. 39
Harmonic Mean Results ......................................................................................... 39
R/Ø-based methods .............................................................................................. 40
f
Fry Results ............................................................................................................. 42
Summary of GSG Fry’ method Result and R/Ø-based-methods Results .............. 46
f
Eastern and Western Limbs Strain Results Correlations ........................................... 47
R/Ø-based-methods Results ................................................................................. 48
f
Fry’s Method Results ............................................................................................. 48
Mineral Bluff Group Strain Analysis Results............................................................... 48
Harmonic Mean Results ......................................................................................... 48
R/Ø-based methods .............................................................................................. 49
f
Fry Results ............................................................................................................. 51
Summary of MBG Fry’ Method Result and R/Ø-based-methods Results .............. 55
f
Murphy Belt Strain Analyses Results (GSG and MBG) .............................................. 56
R/Ø-based-methods Strain Analyses Results (Murphy Belt) ................................. 57
f
Fry Method ............................................................................................................. 58
Strain Analysis Results along the Murphy Belt .......................................................... 60
Northern Part Strain Analysis Results .................................................................... 60
Middle Part Strain Analysis Results ........................................................................ 61
Southern Part Strain Analysis Results: ................................................................... 63
Volume Change Analysis and Shortening .................................................................. 65

5.DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................. 78

6.CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................... 98

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 102
APPENDIX A: SAMPLES LOCATIONS AND QUADRANGLES .............................. 102
APPENDIX B: PRINCIPLE STRAIN PLANES AND AXES OF THE MURPHY BELT
................................................................................................................................. 105
APPENDIX C: HAND SPECIMENS ........................................................................ 107
APPENDIX D: GRAINS AND ELLIPSES (Hand Specimens) ...................................112
APPENDIX E: SAPE RESULTS .............................................................................. 124
APPENDIX F: Rf VS. Ø ........................................................................................... 184
APPENDIX G: Rf/Ø (Using ESC)............................................................................. 190
APPENDIX H: CRITICAL VALUES OF χ2 AND I OF LISLE 1985, AND χ2 AND I
sym sym
OF THIS STUDY ..................................................................................................... 203
APPENDIX I: USTRAINED RESULTS ..................................................................... 206
APPENDIX J: HAND SPECIMENS (Fry Plots) ........................................................ 212
APPENDIX K: THINSECTION ................................................................................. 228
APPENDIX L: STRAIN RESULTS CORRELATIONS .............................................. 242
APPENDIX M: ERROR BARS ................................................................................. 250
APPENDIX N: FLINN AND LOG-FLINN Diagrams .................................................. 264
vii
APPENDIX O: STRAIN ANALYSIS RESULTS FOR NORTHERN, MIDDLE,
SOUTHERN PARTS ................................................................................................ 272

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 275

BIOGRAPHICAL CKETCH ......................................................................................... 287

viii
LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Major phases of folding in the Murphy belt (From Groszos and Tull, 2007) ..... 17
Table 2: A summary of the major fold phases of previous works (From Groszos and Tull,
2007) ............................................................................................................................. 17
Table 3: ESC Results Summary .................................................................................... 30
Table 4: MM Results Summary ..................................................................................... 31
Table 5: MRL Results Summary .................................................................................... 32
Table 6: Dunnet Software Results Summary ................................................................. 33
Table 7: Fry’s Method Results Summary ....................................................................... 34
Table 8: Harmonic Mean Summary ............................................................................... 66
Table 9: Great Smokey Group Strain Analysis Results Summary (Including Rf/Ø-Based-
Method and Fry’s Method) ............................................................................................ 67
Table 10: Eastern and Western Limbs Strain Analysis Results Summary ..................... 68
Table 11: Mineral Bluff Group Strain Analysis Results Summary (Rf/Ø-Based-Method
and Fry’s Method) ......................................................................................................... 69
Table 12: Murphy Belt Strain Results Summary ............................................................ 70
Table 13: Volume Change in GSG, MBG, and Murphy syncline .................................... 71

ix