HOLOCENE TECTONO-SEDIMENTARY EVOLUTION OF PARTS OF THE BAITARANI DELTA AROUND JAJPUR AREA, ODISHA

Abstract

Baitarani delta is one of the integral parts of the Mahandi delta. The Mahandi basin is a rift basin formed due to the rifling of Indian subcontinent from the Antartica plate. The basin is drained by three major rivers of the region i.e. Mahanadi River, Brahamani River and Baitarani River. A few numbers of the studies have been done on the field of tectono-sedimentary evolution around the east coast of Odisha (Mahalik et a]., 1996; Kumar et al., 2003). The purpose of the work is to fill the gap and to generate information pertaining to neo-tectonic and sedimentation process. Major geomorphic changes such as drainage pattern and topographic breaks from DEM and DTM were used to decipher possible faults in the region. The lithological logs were used to study depositional changes with time. Ground Penetrating Radar (G.P.R) studies revealed the presence of the fault up to shallow subsurface, whose signatures were prominent on the surface. There were two faults (JR - PK Fault and PK - JT Fault) mostly having the trend NE- SW running parallel to each other. The JR-PK Fault is mostly of listric type (i.e. the fault plane is curved) but the fault is not traceable beyond 20m depth. The PK- iT Fault is of normal type but as similar to JR-PK Fault the displacement is not traceable beyond 20m depth. Literatures suggested the presence of two set of lineaments in the Mahanadi Basin, Mahanadi- Son lineament trending i.e. NW-SE trend and the lineament trending parallel to coastline i.e. NE-SW (Biswas, 1999; Kumar et al., 2003). So the faults found in the upper reaches of the Baitarani delta are mostly trending in the NE-SW direction and are parallel to the lirieaments which are parallel to the East coast