Geochemical signature of orogenic hydrothermal activity in an active tectonic intersection zone, Alpine Fault, New Zealand

A highly faulted and fractured rock mass has developed at the intersection of the Alpine and Hope faults, two major active faults in the South Island, New Zealand. The Alpine Fault is an oblique dextral reverse fault at the late Cenozoic-Recent Pacific-Australian plate boundary. The Hope Fault is a strike-slip fault parallel to the plate convergence vector. Hydrothermal fluids driven by the active tectonic processes have passed through the fractured rock mass, causing localised rock alteration and vein formation. Mylonites in the Alpine Fault zone are crosscut by cm-scale veins of quartz and/or ankerite with minor sulphides, with cemented breccias in dilational jogs. Breccia clasts and immediate (cm-scale) host rocks have been variably impregnated with carbonates and quartz. This generation of veins, breccias and altered rocks is post-dated by cataclasite and fault gouge zones which have been cemented by calcite, illite, smectite and chamosite. Ankerite and calcite have delta(18)O between +10 and + 30parts per thousand, and delta(13)C between 0 and -8parts per thousand. These minerals are inferred to have formed from water with variable components of both meteoric and crustally exchanged fluid. Rock alteration associated with ankerite-quartz veins has added arsenic (up to 200 ppm As), strontium, and some Y to the rocks. Host-rock mylonites (< 2 ppm As) have been depleted in arsenic compared to their precursors (5-15 ppm As). This depletion of arsenic in the middle crust provides the source for arsenic in shallower-level vein systems.