Fu‐Yun Wang

The P-wave velocity structure of the lithosphere of the North China Craton-Results from the Wendeng-Alxa Left Banner deep seismic sounding profile

For the first time on the Chinese mainland, long-range wide-angle seismic reflection/refraction profiling technology has been applied to seismic wave phases from different depths and with different attributes within the various blocks of the North China Craton to characterize the structure of the crust and upper mantle lithosphere. By comparative analysis of the seismic wave phase characteristics in each block across a 1500-km-long east-west profile, we have identified conventional Pg, Pci, PmP and Pn phases in the crust, made a clear contrast between PL1 and PL2 waves belonging to two groups of lithospheric-scale phases, and produced a model of crust-mantle velocity structures and tectonic characteristics after one- and two-dimensional calculations and processing. The results show that the thickness of the crust and lithosphere gradually deepens from east to west along the profile. However, at the reflection/refraction interface, seismic waves in each group show obvious localized changes in each block. Also, the depth to the crystalline basement changes greatly, from as much as 7.8 km in the North China fault basin to only about 2 km beneath the Jiaodong Peninsula and Taihang-Lüliang area. The Moho morphology as a whole ranges from shallow in the east to deep in the west, with the deepest point in the Ordos Block at 47 km; in contrast, the North China Plain Block is uplifting. The L1 interface of the lithosphere is observed only to the west of Taihang Mountains, at a relatively slowly changing depth of about 80 km. The L2 interface varies from 75 to 160 km and shows a sharp deepening to the west of Taihang Mountains, forming a mutation belt.

Three-dimensional crustal velocity structure model of the middle-eastern north China Craton (HBCrust1.0)

Lithosphere thinning and destruction in the middle-eastern North China Craton (NCC), a region susceptible to strong earthquakes, is one of the research hotspots in solid earth science. All 42 seismic wide-angle reflection/refraction profiles have been completed in the middle-eastern NCC. We collect all the 2-D profiling results and perform gridding of the velocity and interface depth data, building a 3-D crustal velocity structure model for the middle-eastern NCC, named HBCrust1.0, by using the Kriging interpolation method. Our result shows that the first-arrival times calculated by HBCust1.0 fit well with the observations. The result demonstrates that the upper crust is the main seismogenic layer, and the brittle-ductile transition occurs at depths near interface C (the interface between upper and lower crust). The depth of interface Moho varies beneath the source area of the Tangshan earthquake, and a low-velocity structure is found to extend from the source area to the lower crust. Based on these observations, it can be inferred that stress accumulation responsible for the Tangshan earthquake may have been closely related to the migration and deformation of the mantle materials. Comparisons of the average velocities of the whole crust, the upper and the lower crust show that the average velocity of the lower crust under the central part of the North China Basin (NCB) in the east of the craton is obviously higher than the regional average. This high-velocity probably results from long-term underplating of the mantle magma.