Pleistocene/Holocene graben along Pondicherry ‐ Cumbum Valley, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

The recent earth movements and the related seismicities in the Southern part of the Indian Peninsula has been a matter of enigma for a century and more. While one school was strongly holding the opinion that the southern Indian Peninsula is free from recent earth movements as it is a shield area, the other school has narrated the possibilities for the ongoing earth movements. Under these circumstances, the various anomalies observed from satellite data and ground based information on geomorphology, subsurface lithology, geophysics, hydrogeology, geochemistry etc. have suggested a possible Pleistocene/Holocene graben along Pondicherry in the northeast and Cumbum Valley in the southwest in the southern tip of the Indian Peninsula.