Orogeny in Arc-Continent Collision - the Banda Arc and Western New-Guinea

Eastern Indonesia contains a modern continent-island-arc collision that demonstrates how a complex juxtaposition of continental and oceanic elements can occur in an orogenic belt. Shallow earthquakes show that strike-slip faulting transports large crustal blocks into, out of, and along the collision zone while crustal shortening and thickening occur by steep-angle thrust faulting near the strike-slip faulting. Whereas strike-slip faulting is paramount in positioning Australian continental rocks so as to enclose the oceanic and island-arc rocks of eastern Indonesia, its role may be overshadowed by the contemporaneous thrusting and may confuse geologic interpretations of the resulting orogenic belt.