EPS 116 - Laboratory

Structural Geology

LAB Exercise #2
Stereographic Projections GOAL: Stereonets are a convenient and common way to represent structural orientation data. This lab will give you practical experience using stereonets to plot your structural data. Below are some examples of stereonets in the latest issue of the Journal of Structural Geology:

Fig. 2. Fault-slip data collected at selected sites of measurements along the main transverse faults in the Northern Apennines.

Fig. 1. Structural data from the Pampean Terrane.

Pinan-Llamas & Simpson, 2009

Bonini, 2009

Fig. 7. Scattered data and contoured pole figures showing twin plane data.

Hildyard et al., 2009

Fig. 4. a) Orientation data for stretching lineation and foliation b) Restored orientation data projection c) Pitch/dip-direction correlation diagram

Vitale & Mazzoli, 2009

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Structural Geology

Setting Up Your Stereonet

Stereonet plotting by hand is usually done using a piece of tracing paper over a stereonet from a book. You will need: A piece of tracing paper for every stereonet problem A blank stereonet (attached to this lab) A thumbtack A thumbtack protector Place the thumbtack through the center of the blank stereonet so that the sharp end is exposed on the printed side of the stereonet.

Place a piece of tracing paper over the stereonet and punching a hole in its center with the sharp end of the thumbtack. Place the thumbtack protector over the sharp end of the tack.

Label the tracing paper with your name, the date, and a description of the problem you are working on. There is nothing worse than a great stereonet that solves a problem, but you just aren't sure which problem! Trace the outer circle of the stereonet onto the tracing paper. Make a tick mark at north.

label

You are now ready to begin plotting lines, planes, and poles.

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Structural Geology

Plotting Lines and Planes

The stereographic projection of a line is simply a point, so plotting the representation of the point will be pretty easy. Imagine that the finger below is a linear feature. It intersects the bowl at a single point, as shown in the view from above. A stereonet is essentially the view of the bowl from above.

From above

The same is true for planes: From above

To start plotting a line, visualize the problem. The grid marks along the outer circle of the stereonet represent azimuths. Points closer to the outer circle will have shallow plunges (close to zero) and points near the center will have steep plunges. Where do your lines lie? N Azimuths for trend W E

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EPS 116 - Laboratory

Structural Geology

Plotting Lines
To plot the point representation of the line, you'll need to first find the azimuth that represents the line's trend. Count the grid marks to find the trend of the line and make a small tick mark along the outer circle (bold grid lines are spaced 10, thin grid lines are at 2 spacing). Then, rotate the tracing paper so that the tick mark on your tracing paper is aligned with the North mark on the Stereonet. N Count 47 on the grid W Make a tick mark S E Rotate so the tick mark is at North N

Now, you'll need the line's plunge. Remember that shallower plunges plot near the edge of the stereonet. start at North on the stereonet and count grid squares along the straight line that connects North and South. N Count 30 on the grid W E

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EPS 116 - Laboratory

Structural Geology

Plotting Planes
The stereographic projection of a plane is a line. Successfully representing a plane on your stereonet will therefore require you to draw a line. Since there are only two straight lines on the stereonet, it's likely that the line representing your plane will be a curve as well! Remember how the strike and dip of a plane are simply the trend of the strike line and the plunge of the dip line? Well, plotting planes will be similar to plotting lines for exactly this reason. You begin by setting up your stereonet. Next, visualize the problem. Steeply dipping planes will run close to the center of the stereonet and shallow dipping planes will be closer to the outer circle. Make a tick mark at the plane's strike and then rotate your stereonet so that this mark is aligned with north. This is the same as plotting the trend of a line. N Count 47 on the grid W Make a tick mark S E Rotate so the tick mark is at North N

When plotting the plunge of a line, you counted inward on the line that connects NorthSouth. However, the dip direction is 90 away from the strike direction. If your plane is east-dipping, count grid squares inward from the East side of the straight line that connects East-West on the stereonet. If your plane is west-dipping, start on the west side. You can't just draw a point here. You draw a line tracing out the "great circle" path going through this point. From this point, draw along the curved line that connects your point to North and South. N Count 30 on the grid W E W

Draw great circle through this point. E

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Structural Geology

Plotting Poles
It can sometimes get very messy to plot a lot of lines on the stereonet, but we may still want to represent a lot of planes. For this reason, we plot "poles" to planes. A pole is simply a line that passes exactly perpendicular to a plane. Each plane has exactly one pole in the lower hemisphere of a stereonet (and one in the upper, but we always plot the lower one.

To plot the pole of a plane, follow the directions for plotting a planeuntil you get to the step where you are about to draw the great circle. Your stereonet should look like the left side of the pictures below. Since the pole should be exactly 90 away from the plane, just keep counting 90 more along the grid squares. N N Count 90 more along the East-West line W E W E

Calculating Rake We use rake to describe the angle between a plane and lineations on that plane. For example, we can describe the orientations of slickenlines on a fault surface. Rake is simply the angle between the strike direction and the lineation trend. You can figure this out simply on a stereonet by just counting the grid squares along the great circle line. Rakes of 0 are at North and South, while a rake of 90 is in the middle.

N
0 45

90

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Structural Geology

Determing the Trend and Plunge of a Line from a stereonet In some cases, you will need to read off the trend and plunge of a line from a stereonet. 1) Rotate the tracing paper such that the point representing the 3-D line is along the North-South axis of the stereonet. 2) To determine the plunge, count the grid squares between North and the intersection point. 3) Make a tick mark on your tracing paper on top of the North from the stereonet. To find the trend, rotate the tracing paper back to normal, being careful not to lose track of the tick mark you just make. The trend is the azimuth of the tick mark. Determing the Strike and Dip of a Plane from a stereonet 1) Rotate the tracing paper such that the two ends of the great circle that represents the plane are at North and South. 2) To determine the dip, count the grid squares from east or west 3) Make a tick mark on your tracing paper on top of the North from the stereonet. To find the strike of the plane, rotate the tracing paper back to normal, being careful not to lose track of the tick mark you just make. The trend is the azimuth of the tick mark. Intersection of two planes In 3-D, two planes will intersect in a line. 1) Visualize the problem 2) Plot each plane 3) On the stereonet plot, the two great circles should intersect at a point. 4) Follow the directions for determining the trend and plung of a line on the stereonet. Apparent Dip Calculations. Stereonets make it easy to calculate apparent dips. In an apparent dip problem, you are looking at a cross section of the fault that is not taken perpendicular to the strike of the feature you are interested in. For example, suppose you are looking at bedding planes exposed in a quarry wall. 1) Plot the plane of the feature you are viewing (i.e., bedding planes) 2) Plot the plane that represents your viewing angle (i.e., quarry wall orientation). 3) The apparent dip is the same as the plunge line of intersection between these two planes. (See above) True Dip from Two Apparent Dips Sometimes, a bed will be exposed in two quarry walls, but you can't determine the true strike or dip at either one of them. 1) Plot each apparent dip observation as a 3-D line: For the line's trend, use the bearing of the observation. For the line's plunge, use the apparent dip that you measured. 2) Rotate the tracing paper until you can draw a great circle that passes through both these points. 3) Use the method above for determining the strike and dip of this feature.

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Structural Geology

LAB Exercise #2
Stereographic Projections Due: Thursday, 12 February 2009 PART 1 - Complete the following exercises from Marshak & Mitra by hand, using the equal angle stereonet attached to this handout. PART 2 - Solve problems 1,2,6, and 8 using a computer steronet program. You may use your own computer or the computers in room 335. You may use the stereonet programs to do all of the problems in the lab, and check your work, however hand copies of all the exercises are required. (20 pts) We have collected some good programs for the Mac and PC at: http://www.geo.berkeley.edu/~burgmann/EPS116/labs/lab2_2009/stereo.html 1) Plotting planes (Marshak & Mitra, Problem 5.1, p. 102; 1 pt each, 8 pts total) Plot each of the following Bed orientations as great circles on the same tracing paper overlay. Label each plane. Be sure you visualize each plane as you plot it! a) N25E, 44NW e) 234, 18NW b) N14W, 85SW f) 047, 01NW c) N83W, 43NE g) 090, 38N d) N72E, 06SE h) 180, 90E 2) Plotting Lines (Marshak & Mitra, Problems 5.2; p. 103; 1 pt each, 8 pts total) Plot each of the following lineations (plunge/trend) as points on the same tracing paper overlay (but different than problem 1). a) 32, 087 e) 86, 270 b) 43, 217 f) 59, N60E c) 12, N12E g) 59, S60E d) 88, 092 h) 59, N60W 3) Lab #1 Revisited (15 pts) Imagine that you discover a previously unreported fault on the Berkeley campus. During field mapping, you recorded the trend and plunge of 4 different and overprinted sets of slickenlines. When you sit down to write the paper that will make you famous, you find something wrong. Here is the information from your field notes: Fault Surface Strike/Dip: N39W, 47E Slickenline lineation 1 Plunge/Trend: 47, N51E Slickenline lineation 2 68, due N Slickenline lineation 3 47, N51W Slickenline lineation 4 34, due N a) Assuming that you recorded the planar attitude of the fault surface correctly, determine which lineation measurements are impossible. In other words, which lineation(s) cannot possibly lie in the specified plane. This time, support your statements with a well constructed stereonet. (6 pts) b) Assuming the measurement of lineation 1 is correct, what is its rake? (3 pt) Lab Exercise #2 5-Feb-2009

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EPS 116 - Laboratory Structural Geology c) Assuming the measurement of lineation 1 is correct, is the fault a strike-slip fault or a dip slip fault? (3 pt) d) After your last mistake, you return to the outcrop on campus and re-measure the lineations. This time, you get the correct ones from the previous set plus two additional sets. (3 pts) Slickenline lineation b1 Plunge/Trend: 11, N29W Slickenline lineation b2 Plunge/Trend: 38, N29E What is the difference in angle (difference in rake) between these two lineations? 4) Calculating apparent dip from true dip (6 pts) It turns out that your fault is also exposed during excavation of the foundation for the new Institute for Waterballoon Science on campus. The excavation wall is vertical and trends N20W. What is the apparent dip of the fault? 5) Calculating true dip from apparent dip (After Marschak & Mitra 5.8, p. 104; 6 pts) Interesting outcrops of Claremont chert are exposed in the two other walls of the excavation. According to George Brimhall, there shouldn't be any Claremont chert anywhere near campus, so your discovery is quite significant. George asks for the strike and dip of the formation so that he can have his 101 students enter it into their pen computers. Unfortunately, you can't get a good measurement of the strike or dip. Instead, you measure the apparent dip in two vertical walls. What is the true dip of the Claremont chert formation? Wall 1: Strike: S48W. Dip: Vertical. Apparent dip of Chert: 23. Wall 2: Strike: N55W, Dip: Vertical. Apparent dip of Chert: 34 6) Plotting poles (1 pt each, 7 pts total) Plot the following planes as poles on a stereogram. Put all poles on the same overlay and label each. a) 025, 44NW b) N14W, 85SW c) N83W, 43NE d) 072, 6 SE e) 234, 18NW f) 040, 90SE g) 090, 38N

7) One limb of a chevron fold is oriented N23E, 57SE, and the other limb is oriented N12W, 71SW. (Hint, "chevron folds" are shown in figure 12.23 on page 251 of Twiss and Moores. They have roughly planar limbs and most of the deformation occurs in the fold axis.) a) What is the plunge and trend of the fold hinge? (5 pts) b) What is the inter-limb angle? (5 pts)

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Structural Geology

8) In areas where structural measurements have been made it is often convenient to enter the data on equal-area (see pp. 157-62, 164-66, etcin M&M) nets. The method of plotting is identical to that used with the equal-angle net, but the rectangular areas in the net occupy the same percentage of space so that points in the net can be counted and contoured for statistical purposes. If the beds or foliations in a region have undergone cylindrical folding (pp. 157-59, 269 in M&M) and we plot their attitudes on the net, the planes tend to intersect at a point (or several points), called the -axis; it coincides with the trend and plunge of the fold axis in the region. This diagram, called a -diagram (pp. 157-58, M&M), becomes very crowded when there are a large number of planar data. Hence it is generally more convenient to plot the poles to the planes, rather than the planes themselves. This is called a !-diagram (pp. 158-62 in M&M). If the fold is cylindrical, the points plotted will be distributed along a great circle on the stereonet. This arc, called a girdle (pg. 156 in M&M), has a pole normal to it, which is the fold axis.

Use the following array of data to construct and !-diagrams (on different traces) and answer the following questions (20 pts): a) How many fold axes are present? (4 pts) b) What is the trend and plunge of each fold axis? (8 pts) c) What is (are) the angle(s) between the fold axes? Remember, the angle between two axes is measured in the plane that includes both axes. (8 pts) N45W, 80NE N3W, 55E 292, 70SW N25W, 60NE 18, 42SE N27E, 41SE S75E, 60SW N68E, 60SE 335, 48SW N50E, 44SE 277, 60SW N60E, 70SE N82W, 44SW N65E, 44SE 310, 40SW 0, 50W N20E, 70NW S40W, 90 S82W, 50SE

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