The Southern Uplands Fault (or occasionally Southern Upland Fault) is a fault in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...

that runs from

Girvan Girvan ( gd, Inbhir Gharbhain, "mouth of the River Girvan") is a burgh and harbour town in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Girvan is situated on the east coast of the Firth of Clyde, with a population of about 6,450. It lies south of Ay ...

(or more specifically from the

Rhins of Galloway The Rhins of Galloway, otherwise known as the Rhins of Wigtownshire (or as The Rhins, also spelt The Rhinns; gd, Na Rannaibh), is a hammer-head peninsula in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Stretching more than from north to south, its southern ...

) to

Dunbar Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and gave its name to an ...

on the East coast. It marks the southern boundary of the Scottish Midland Valley and the northern margin of the

Southern Uplands The Southern Uplands ( gd, Na Monaidhean a Deas) are the southernmost and least populous of mainland Scotland's three major geographic areas (the other two being the Central Lowlands and the Grampian Mountains and the Highlands, as illustrate ...

; indeed it is recognised as a boundary between these two

terrane In geology, a terrane (; in full, a tectonostratigraphic terrane) is a crust fragment formed on a tectonic plate (or broken off from it) and accreted or " sutured" to crust lying on another plate. The crustal block or fragment preserves its ow ...

s. Both

sinistral Sinistral and dextral, in some scientific fields, are the two types of chirality ("handedness") or relative direction. The terms are derived from the Latin words for "left" (''sinister'') and "right" (''dexter''). Other disciplines use different ...

and

dextral Sinistral and dextral, in some scientific fields, are the two types of chirality (" handedness") or relative direction. The terms are derived from the Latin words for "left" (''sinister'') and "right" (''dexter''). Other disciplines use differe ...

strike-slip 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 ...

movement is recorded from parts of the fault as are down-north and down-south normal movements suggestive of a complex history. The Stinchar, Dove Cove and

Glen App fault A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower ...

s form a part of the Southern Upland Fault Zone in the southwest whilst in the northeast, the Lammermuir, Dunbar-Gifford, Crossgatehall, Pentland and Firth of Forth faults are all associated with the Southern Uplands Fault.Oliver, G.J.H, Stone, P. & Bluck, B.J. 2002 ''The Ballantrae Complex and Southern Uplands terrane''. In Trewin, N.H. (ed) ''The Geology of Scotland'', The Geological Society, London p191-2

References

Geology of Scotland Southern Uplands {{geology-stub

See also

References