In the central portion of the Transversal Zone (Borborema Province, northeastern Brazil), field geological mapping combined with interpretation of airborne gammaspectrometric, magnetic and satellite imagery (Landsat 7 ETM+) data were performed in order to evaluate the importance (especially, continuation at depth) of shear zones as potential candidates to represent terrain boundaries and sutures. This integrated analysis emphasized three deeper structures which separate crustal blocks, including as such the Serra do Caboclo and the Congo-Cruzeiro do Nordeste shear zones. A deep anomaly, located between those two structures, may represent the continuation, horizontally displaced, of one of them, or a third, non outcropping but interconnected shear zone. The favored interpretation considers this sector of the Transversal Zone as formed by deep-rooted, northeast-southwest trending shear zones (with tops of anomalies reaching 6 to 16 km depths), cut by shallower structures (tops of the anomalies reaching, at maximum, 2 to 6 km depth), with east-west trends. In this context, the importance and continuity at depth of the Serra do Caboclo shear zone is highlighted, and as such inferred to be the suture between Piancó-Alto Brígida and Alto Pajeú terranes, in accordance with field geological data.
aerogammaspectrometric; aeromagnetic; Landsat 7; transversal zone; Borborema Province
