The Stratigraphic and Tectonic development of the Manokwari Area, Irian Jaya

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

The Manokwari area lies in the northeastern extremity of the Kepala Burung region in the western part of Irian Jaya. In 1976 the area was investigated at the start of an ongoing mapping programme which will be carried out as an Indonesian-Australian integrated geological survey of Irian Jaya. Ten mappable units have been recognised in the area, ranging in age from Silurian to Holocene. The Silurian to Devonian metamorphics crop out in the southern mountainous region, and consist mainly of fine-grained low-grade regionally metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. Along the length of the mountain front these rocks have been intruded and partially assimilated in places by a number of late Permian to middle Triassic granodiorite bodies and a middle Miocene diorite body. Basalt and andesite flow breccia, tuff, and volcaniclastic sediments occur to the southeast, and are probably Oligocene to Miocene in age. Massive algal-foraminiferal biomicrite of Miocene age forms a number of elongate ridges to the northeast of the volcanics and probably unconformably overlies them. In the northeastern part of the area soft, well-bedded mudstone, siltstone and sandstone of late Miocene to Pleistocene age is unconformably overlain by Pleistocene raised reefs. Surrounded by the western part of the extensive alluvial plain is a symmetrical mountain of ?Pliocene agglomerate. Immediately to the south, at the edge of the mountain front is an area of uplifted, dissected, and northerly-tilted coarse alluvium and fanglomerate. The Manokwari area is situated amid a complex array of crustal plates and sub-plates which formed as a result of complicated interaction between the Australian and Pacific Plates and the island arcs and ocean basins of the Indonesian Archipelago. The two major structural elements within the Manokwari Sheet, the Sorong and Ransiki Fault Zones, are continent-island arc collision sutures which have subsequently undergone sinistral transcurrent faulting.

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Field Value
Title The Stratigraphic and Tectonic development of the Manokwari Area, Irian Jaya
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/e14946f1-febd-4370-b1c9-b98549d91734
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "The Stratigraphic and Tectonic development of the Manokwari Area, Irian Jaya". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/the-stratigraphic-and-tectonic-development-of-the-manokwari-area-irian-jaya