Correlation of geological complexes of the Khan-Tengri Mountain massif

Abstract

Researchers of the border regions of Xinjiang and the Central Asian countries are actively discussing two alternative models for the relationships between the main structural units of the Tianshan mountains. Most researchers believe that the Kyrgyz Middle Tianshan wedges out to the east along the Atbashi-Inylchek-Nalati marginal fault. According to the second hypothesis, the structures of the Middle Tianshan continue within the range Nalati where they are described as Chinese Central Tianshan. Comparing the characteristics of the Paleozoic and Proterozoic sedimentary, volcanogenic, intrusive, and metamorphic formations of these regions leads us to the conclusion that the structural units of the Kyrgyz Middle and most of the Northern Tianshan, including the superimposed Middle-Late Paleozoic troughs, are not continued into China, but are successively cut along the echelon system of conjugated strike-slip faults, united by us into the Frontal Tianshan Dextral Strike-slip (FTDS). And only the northern segment of the Issyk-Kul massif can be considered as an analogue of the Chinese Central Tianshan, displaced along the FTDS to the northwest for a distance of at least 80 km. Therefore, adjacent geological complexes are eroded along the FTDS like the oblique boundaries of convergent lithospheric plates are tectonic eroded.

Drainage rearrangement in an intra-continental mountain belt: A case study from the central South Tian Shan, Kyrgyzstan

“…This pattern of deformation has resulted in the uplift of widely-spaced mountain ranges, separated by intermontane basins (Burbank et al, 1999;Macaulay et al, 2014). Two such basins occur in the Saryjaz river, the Saryjaz and Ak Shyyrak basins, which are mainly filled with Eocene -Pliocene conglomerate, sandstone, and siltstone as well as Recent deposits of pebbles, boulders and clay (Mikolaichuk et al, 2008;Mikolaichuk et al, 2022). Enhanced exhumation of the intervening mountain ranges is recorded during the late Miocene (~12-8 Ma) and Plio-Pleistocene (< 5 Ma; Sobel et al, 2006b;Macaulay et al, 2013Macaulay et al, , 2014Rolland et al, 2020), possibly resulting from an interplay between climate change and tectonic deformation (Sobel et al, 2006b;Rolland et al, 2020;Chang et al, 2021).…”

“…For geological information, we used the digital geological and natural hazard maps of the Khan Tengri massif (Kyrgyzstan), with a scale of 1:200,000 created under the ISTC Project KR-920 (Mikolaichuk et al, 2008;, and the geological map of the Kyrgyz Republic with a scale of 1:500,000 (Zhukov et al, 2008).…”

“…To identify structural and lithologic knickpoints, we referred to geologic mapping (Mikolaichuk et al, 2008) Knickpoints related to lithologic contrasts or to differential rock uplift are usually located on the boundaries of lithologies with different erodibilities or on mapped faults, respectively (Marrucci et al, 2018;Fadul et al, 2022). We identified lithologic and structural knickpoints as those lying within 250 m horizontal distance from the boundaries of lithologic contacts or Cenozoic faults, respectively.…”