Subduction and accretion of sedimentary rocks in the Yakutat collision zone, St. Elias orogen, Gulf of Alaska

The collision of the Yakutat Block with the continental margin of North America in the Gulf of Alaska has intensified exhumation and erosion in the Chugach–St. Elias orogen over the last few million years. The resultant sediment flux and deposition of the glaciomarine Yakataga Formation on the continental shelf has filled a deep sedimentary basin offshore, where the Pamplona fold-thrust belt first deforms these strata. It is presently unclear whether the older sedimentary rocks of the Poul Creek and Kulthieth Formations are also accreted in the Pamplona Zone, or whether they are underthrusting the margin. In this paper we use marine seismic and well logging data to show that in the offshore Yakataga strata, porosity loss and lateral compaction can account for half of the convergence between the Yakutat Block and North America over the last 2 Myr. A lateral seismic velocity gradient in these syn-orogenic strata suggests that this layer-parallel shortening starts approximately 100 km outboard of the deformation front. Beneath the fold-and-thrust belt, where the seismic velocity is as high as 4.7 km/s, we image a large low-velocity zone (2.0–2.5 km/s) at 5 km depth. The dramatic decrease in seismic velocity with depth coincides with the boundary between the Yakataga and Poul Creek Formations in well data. Fine-grained and organic-rich Poul Creek strata possibly accommodate slip, such that older sedimentary rocks are entrained with the subducting Yakutat Block. Alternatively, the imaged low-velocity zone may have formed by increased fluid pressures in the hanging wall. In that case the décollement would lie beneath this low-velocity zone, possibly within the coal-bearing layers of the older and deeper Kulthieth Formation.