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Hairpin river loops and slip-sense inversion on southeast Asian strike-slip faults

¹ Laboratoire de Tectonique, Mécanique de la Lithosphère, UMR 7578 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, 75252 Paris cedex 05, France

In the Golden Triangle region of southeast Asia (northern Thailand, Laos and Burma, southern Yunnan), the Mekong, Salween, and neighboring rivers show hairpin geometries where they cross active strike-slip faults. Restoration of young, left-lateral offsets of these rivers leaves residual right-lateral bends of many kilometers. We interpret these hairpins as evidence of late Cenozoic slip-sense inversion on these faults, about 5 to 20 Ma. Near the Red River fault, stress field and slip-sense inversion occurred ca. 5 Ma. This implies that the present course of these large rivers has existed for at least several million years. Pliocene–Quaternary slip rates, possibly on the order of 1 mm/yr, are inferred on each of the strike-slip faults of the Golden Triangle.

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