Structural Measurement Atlas
Atlas / Measurement types / Lineation (mineral, stretching)

Lineation (mineral, stretching) measurements

39,214 lineation (mineral, stretching) measurements from published US geologic maps, recorded as trend and plunge and cited to the map each came from — 5% of the Atlas.

Show only lineation (mineral, stretching) on the map

What it is

A lineation is a linear element in a rock's fabric rather than a planar one, so it is recorded as a trend and a plunge instead of a strike and a dip. The category covers several distinct origins: mineral lineations from aligned elongate crystals, stretching lineations from deformed clasts or grains, and intersection lineations where two planar fabrics meet.

In ductilely deformed rock a stretching lineation commonly parallels the direction of tectonic transport, which makes it one of the few field measurements that speaks directly to the direction a nappe or thrust sheet moved. Read together with the foliation that contains it, it defines the long axis of the strain ellipsoid.

A working caution for this compilation: many published sources record a lineation's trend but not its plunge, and a trend-only reading is not a full orientation. Those rows are kept and flagged rather than discarded, and should not be treated as three-dimensional data.

How the Atlas records it

Every lineation (mineral, stretching) row carries an azimuth and an inclination in one convention (trend and plunge), a position in WGS 84 with the publisher's own location confidence, the raw type term as the source published it, and the citation of the source map. Selections export as CSV with a companion sources.csv of citations.

Which sources have it

Where it is

StateMeasurementsShare
Colorado 6,82917%
Washington 4,99813%
Vermont 3,7049%
California 2,4426%
New Hampshire 2,3936%
Maine 2,0695%
New Jersey 1,9415%
Massachusetts 1,3744%
Pennsylvania 1,3433%
Idaho 1,0733%
Virginia 1,0533%
Wyoming 9993%
South Dakota 9082%
North Carolina 8502%
Alaska 7072%
Montana 5912%
Oregon 5861%
New York 4941%
Connecticut 4891%
Arizona 4581%
Minnesota 3981%
Wisconsin 199<1%
Georgia 165<1%
New Mexico 130<1%
Rhode Island 81<1%
Utah 80<1%
Nevada 58<1%
Maryland 56<1%
South Carolina 54<1%
Iowa 19<1%
Michigan 13<1%
Arkansas 3<1%
Tennessee 2<1%
Nebraska 2<1%
District of Columbia 2<1%
Alabama 1<1%

Most-measured published maps

Published mapYearScaleMeasurements
WA 1:100,000 surface geology (GeMS), Orientation 1:100,0002,241
Quaternary geologic map of the Lake Nipigon 4 degrees x 6 degrees quadrangle, United States and Canada1994 1:1,000,0001,510
Quaternary geologic map of the Ottawa 4 degrees x 6 degrees quadrangle, United States and Canada1993 1:1,000,0001,273
Merschat, A.J., Carter, M.W., Lynn, A.S., Weinmann, B.R., Odom, W.E., McAleer, R.J., Mahan, S.A., Stewart, K.G., Holm-Denoma, C.S., and Crider, E.A., Jr., 2026, Preliminary geologic map of the Sparta East, Sparta West, and parts of the Glade Valley and Whitehead 7.5-minute quadrangles, North Carolina and Virginia, and the epicentral area of the August 9, 2020, Mw 5.1 earthquake near Sparta, North Carolina: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2026–1010, 1 sheet, scale 1:24,000.2026 1:24,0001,168
Quaternary geologic map of the Quebec 4 degrees x 6 degrees quadrangle, United States and Canada1987 1:1,000,000940
Geologic Quadrangle map series GIS data (GQ24K 1:24,000 and GQ250K 1:250,000) GQ24K = 1:24,000 (Black Hills bedrock quads + eastern glacial quads); GQ250K = 1:250,000 sheets857
Central City — https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_722.htm2019 851
adapted from: Alvord, Donald C., and Drake, Avery Ala Jr., 1971, Geologic Map of the Bushkill Quadrangle, Pennsylvania and New Jersey: U.S. Geological Survey, Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-908, scale 1:24,0002021 24000850
Wright, S.F., 2015, Late Wisconsin ice sheet flow across northern and central Vermont, USA; Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol 129: 216–228.2024 1:100,000707
Black Hawk — https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_10784.htm2019 614
Evergreen — https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_7860.htm2019 559
USGS 1:24,000478

Other measurement types