Abstract
In the Lake Mead-Eldorado Valley (LMEV) area of southern Nevada, mid-Tertiary volcanic and plutonic rocks in the River, McCullough, and Eldorado mountains lie in the upper plate of a regional detachment structure. The detachment structure and strike-slip faults of the Lake Mead fault zone are temporally and kinematically related. Strike-slip systems and normal faults (Eldorado Valley fault) serve as boundaries between regions of variable extension in the upper plate of this detachment. Geochemical correlation and geometric reconstructions suggest that prior to extension, the LMEV area was characterized by three stratovolcano complexes, each above or adjacent to a chemically correlative pluton. Geochemical correlation techniques are useful tools that may have general application in reconstructing structurally disrupted volcanic-plutonic terranes.