Abstract: Structure and Tectonics of the Coyote Valley, South Santa Clara Valley, California

Thomas F. McCloskey

The Coyote Valley is a relatively small and elongate structural basin situated south and immediately adjacent to the much larger San Francisco Bay. With the use of geophysical well logs, a new interpretation is made on the structural configuration of the basin floor and surrounding uplands. The evidence strongly suggests that the formation of this structural basin was primarily the result of compression directed northeasterly after the deposition of the Plio-Pleistocene age Santa Clara Formation. This compression forced the basin floor and overlying Santa Clara Formation sediments downwards along a steeply-dipping fault present along the eastern basin margin, and it forced upward the area east of the bounding fault. The movement resulted in the formation of a structural depression for deposition of the thick Holocene alluvium shed from the created uplands.

The tectonic history of the Coyote Valley could be relevant to the San Francisco Bay because of their proximity. Future study of the San Francisco Bay could reveal similar relationships to explain the presence of a large structural trough in an otherwise compressional tectonic regime.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90958©1995 AAPG Pacific Section Meeting, San Francisco, California