The Paraíso Fault or Palmira-Buga Fault ( es, Falla de Paraíso, Falla de Palmira-Buga) is a thrust fault with minor dextral lateral movement 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 Valle del Cauca in southwestern

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 is part of the megaregional

Romeral Fault System The Romeral Fault System ( es, Sistema de Fallas (de) Romeral) is a megaregional system of major parallel and anastomosing faults in the Cordillera Central (Colombia), Central Ranges of the Colombian Andes and the Cauca Basin, Cauca, Amagá Basin, ...

and has a total length of and runs along an average north-northwest to south-southeast strike of 012.5 ± 3 in the Cauca Basin and the

Central Ranges Central Ranges (code CER) is an Australian bioregion, with an area of 101,640.44 square kilometres (39,244 sq mi) spreading across two states and one territory: South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.Andes.

Etymology

The fault is named after hacienda El Paraíso.Paris et al., 2000a, p.22 An alternative name is Palmira-Buga Fault.Mapa Geológico Valle del Cauca, 2001

Description

The Paraiso Fault is part of the Romeral Fault System in southwestern Colombia. It is located at the western slope of the Central Ranges, east of the city of Palmira. The fault displaces alluvial fans and debris flows on the eastern border of the Valle del Cauca Department. North of the Amaime River, the fault seems to be more active in late Quaternary than the portion south of the river. The Paraiso Fault is concave to the east and shows an outstanding linear trace for more than . The fault is divided in two portions: the southern portion, about long, is located to the south of the Amaime River; the northern part extends about north of the river. Geographic expression suggests that the northern portion is more active than the southern one. The fault is characterised by a series of discontinuous short sinuous scarps of about long. The height of the scarps varies from .

Activity

The fault is considered active with Holocene tectonic movement. Two trenches were opened in the northern part of the fault: the Venecia and Piedechinche trenches, each of which show Holocene tectonic deformation. Movement is well defined as early Holocene, it is younger than 6,320 yr as determined from C-14 ages of folded paleosoils sampled in the Venecia trench.Paris et al., 2000a, p.23

References

Bibliography

Maps

* *