North American Continent-Ocean Transect Program Explanatory Pamphlet for Transect E-4, Central Kentucky to the Carolina Trough

Abstract

E-4 is one of eight Geodynamics transects that cross the Atlantic margin of North America between Georgia and Newfoundland. Five of the transects are in the United States and three are in Canada. Transect E-4, which is 110 km wide and more than 1,100 km long, extends from the stable North American craton just west of the Grenville front near Lexington, Kentucky southeastward across Cape Fear, North Carolina, on the Atlantic coast to oceanic crust east of the Blake Spur magnetic anomaly. Like all of the other U.S. Atlantic coast transects, it crosses Cambrian and Jurassic continental margins of North America as well as the Appalachian orogen. The display, based upon published information, portrays the geology, tectonic style and geophysical expression of this segment of the eastern North American continental margin and interprets its Phanerozoic history. The Decade of North American Geology 1983 geologic time scale (Palmer, 1983) is used throughout the display and text.