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The Taiwan mountain belt is generally thought to develop above a through-going basal thrust confined to within the sedimentary cover of the Eurasian continental margin. Surface geology, magnetotelluric, earthquake hypocenter, and seismic tomography data suggest, however, that crustal levels below this basal thrust are also currently being involved in the deformation. Here, we combine seismic tomography and earthquake hypocenter data to investigate the deformation that is taking place at depth beneath south-central Taiwan. In this paper, we define the basement as any pre-Eocene rifting rocks, and use a P-wave velocity of 5.2 km/s as a reference for the interface between these rocks and their sedimentary cover. We found that beneath the Coastal Plain and the Western Foothills clustering of hypocenters near the basement-cover interface suggests that this interface is acting as a detachment. This detachment is located below the basal thrust proposed from surface geology for this part of the mountain belt. Inherited basement faults appear to determine the geometry of this detachment, and their inversion in the Alishan area result in the development of a basement uplift and a lateral structure in the thrust system above them. However, across the Shuilikeng and the Chaochou faults, earthquake hypocenters define steeply dipping clusters that extend to greater than 20 km depth, above which higher velocity basement rocks are uplifted beneath the Hsuehshan and Central ranges. We interpret these clusters to form a deeply penetrating, east-dipping ramp that joins westward with the detachment at the basement-cover interface. It is not possible to define a basal thrust to the east, beneath the Central Range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Jáchal River Valley displays a number of significant Holocene sedimentary accumulations made up of fine-grained materials. These deposits are interpreted as the sedimentary infill of shallow temporary lakes that were generated by slow growing episodes of alluvial fans that obstructed the Jáchal River Valley. The association of fossil remains through the Holocene sedimentary sequence suggests that the accumulation of lacustrine sediments was affected by climate variations. The predominant aridity was punctuated by very few humid episodes characterised by fresh-water gastropoda and the intercalations of muddy sediments. The high proportion of charcoal particles in some samples indicates periodic forest fires. Abundant non-pollen forest remains suggest that an open zone dominated by several types of grasses underwent a dry season during part of the year. The palynomorph associations found in the Jáchal River Valley Holocene lacustrine sediments suggest that the humid conditions were less intense than those in the San Juan River Valley located more than one hundred kilometres southwards. Our study suggests that lake formation could have been controlled by climate oscillation probably related to the ENSO variation at 30° south latitude. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]