The origin of oriented lakes in the Andean foreland, Parque Nacional Torres del Paine (Chilean Patagonia)

The Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine and surrounding area in the Magallanes foreland basin in Chilean Patagonia is the site for numerous lakes fed by glaciers and rivers in the Andean highlands to the west. The lakes are elongate and have conspicuously systematic orientations. We hypothesize that the origin of the oriented lakes lies in the fault system, composed of a right-lateral strike-slip fault set oriented 58° from north, a left-lateral strike-slip set oriented 87°, and a thrust fault set oriented 167°, that exists within the underlying rocks. To test this hypothesis quantitatively, we determined the shape and orientation of the lakes by fitting each lake with an ellipse of appropriate aspect ratio, and later with multiple ellipses consistent with the composite geometry of some lakes. We then examined the faults in the area in terms of their kinematics, orientation and distribution. The distribution of lake orientations showed three distinct groups which appear to correspond to the three main fault groups. For lakes fitted with multiple ellipses, the difference in means between the right-lateral, left-lateral, and thrust faults and their corresponding groups of lakes are 3.05°, 1.57°, and 5.17°. Using a Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) statistical test to compare the orientations of faults with respect to the lakes suggests that there is not a strongly significant difference between the fault orientations and the corresponding lake groups. These results indicate that the faults have a profound control on the orientation, shape, and distribution of the lakes. We attribute this to faults and their damage zones being weaker and therefore prone to a faster rate of erosion, and to stress perturbations associated with discontinuous faults resulting in localized high density fracturing and surface subsidence. These results have implications for lake and drainage system morphologies in other foreland basins along the Andes and other similar settings.