The Mutatá Fault ( es, Falla Mutatá) is a

strike-slip fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

in the

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

of Antioquia in northern

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. The fault has a total length of and runs along an average northwest to southeast strike of 326.4 ± 11 in the Urabá Basin. The fault is active and produced the 2016 Mutatá earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.0.

Etymology

The fault is named after

Mutatá Mutatá is a municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. Climate Mutatá has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist a ...

.Paris et al., 2000, p.14

Description

The Mutatá Fault is located in northwestern Colombia, between the Penderisco River and the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

. To the south, near the town of

, the Mutatá Fault approaches the Murrí Fault and the two fault zones practically merge. In this area, the Mutatá Fault places

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

intrusive rocks and greenstones (to the east) in contact with sedimentary Tertiary rocks (to the west). Farther north, the fault cuts Tertiary and Quaternary deposits, with uplift of the eastern block. The Mutatá Fault is located near the junction of the Malpelo,

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

, and North Andean Plates. There is an elongate, tectonically depressed zone between the Mutatá and Murrí Faults. The Mutatá Fault has a prominent topographic expression near the town of Mutatá, as seen on SIR-A satellite images. To the north of Río Sucio, the Mutatá Fault shows discontinuous linear valleys, notches, and trenches (grabens). There are aligned hills and slope changes close to the Central Ranges. Fault scarps, sag ponds, and aligned valleys are very common tectonic features along most of the fault's trace. Some authors consider the fault the northern part of the Murrí-Mutatá Fault.Plancha 129, 2002González, 2001, p.183

Activity

The slip rate has been estimated between per year and the fault is active, with activity registered to the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

and possibly to the intensity X 7 September 1882 Turbo earthquake. The most recent earthquake associated with the fault was the 2016 Mutatá earthquake (M_w 6.0)."Sismos y réplicas ocurridas en Antioquia están asociadas a sistema de fallas geológicas Mistrató- Mutatá"
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Etymology

Description

Activity

See also

References

Bibliography

Maps

Further reading