350px, Schematic overview of a thrust system. The hanging wall block is (when it has reasonable proportions) called a nappe. If an erosional hole is created in the nappe that is called a window. A klippe">erosion.html" ;"title="nappe. If an erosion">nappe. If an erosional hole is created in the nappe that is called a window. A klippe is a solitary outcrop of the nappe in the middle of autochthonous material. A tectonics, tectonic window, or fenster (lit. "window" in German language, German), is a geology, geologic structure formed by erosion or normal faulting on a thrust fault, thrust system. In such a system the rock mass ( fault (geology), hanging wall block) that has been transported by movement along the thrust is called a

nappe In geology, a nappe or thrust sheet is a large sheetlike body of rock that has been moved more than or above a thrust fault from its original position. Nappes form in compressional tectonic settings like continental collision zones or on the ...

. When erosion or normal faulting produces a hole in the nappe where the underlying autochthonous (i.e. un-transported) rocks crop out this is called a window. Klippen are also a feature near windows. The klippe is the remnant portion of a nappe after erosion has removed connecting portions of the nappe. This process results in an outlier of exotic, often nearly horizontally translated strata overlying autochthonous strata. Windows can be almost any size, from a couple of

metre The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

s to hundreds of

kilometre The kilometre (SI symbol: km; or ), spelt kilometer in American English, American and Philippine English, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), equal to one thousand metres (kilo- being the SI prefix for ). It is the ...

s. Well known examples of tectonic windows are Hohe Tauern window in

Eastern Alps The Eastern Alps are usually defined as the area east of a line from Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine valley, up to the Splügen Pass at the Main chain of the Alps, Alpine divide, and down the Liro (Como), Liro River to Lake Como in the south. ...

or Hrzdavá dolina tectonic window in Western Carpathians.Vojtko, R., Králiková, S., Jeřábek, P., Schuster, P., Danišík, M., Fügenschuh, B., Minár, J., Madarás, J., 2016, Geochronological evidence for the Alpine tectono-thermal evolution of the Veporic Unit (Western Carpathians, Slovakia). Tectonophysics, 666, 48-65, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2015.10.014.

References

Structural geology German words and phrases {{struct-geology-stub