Mallory Young

Evidence of micro-continent entrainment during crustal accretion

Simple models involving the gradual outboard accretion of material along curvilinear subduction zones are often inconsistent with field-based evidence. A recent study using 3-D geodynamic modelling has shown that the entrainment of an exotic continental fragment within a simple subduction system can result in a complex phase of growth. Although kinematic models based on structural mapping and high-resolution gravity and magnetic maps indicate that the pre-Carboniferous Tasmanides in southeastern Australia may have been subjected to this process, to date there has been little corroboration from crustal scale geophysical imaging. Here, we apply Bayesian transdimensional tomography to ambient noise data recorded by the WOMBAT transportable seismic array to constrain a detailed (20 km resolution in some areas) 3-D shear velocity model of the crust beneath southeast Australia. We find that many of the velocity variations that emerge from our inversion support the recently developed geodynamic and kinematic models. In particular, the full thickness of the exotic continental block, responsible for orocline formation and the tectonic escape of the back arc region, is imaged here for the first time. Our seismic results provide the first direct evidence that exotic continental fragments may profoundly affect the development of an accretionary orogen.

Complex continental growth along the proto-Pacific margin of East Gondwana

We use ambient noise recordings from the largest transportable seismic array in the Southern Hemisphere to image azimuthal variations in Rayleigh wave phase anisotropy in the crust beneath southeast Australia. This region incorporates a transition from the Precambrian shield region of Australia in the west to younger Phanerozoic terranes in the east, which are thought to have been formed by subduction-accretion processes. Our results, which span the shallow to lower crust, show a strong and consistent pattern of anisotropy that is oriented north-south, approximately parallel to the former margin of East Gondwana. However, significant deviations from this trend persist through the period range 2.5 s to \textgreater10 s. One of the most notable deviations occurs along the edge of cratonic Australia, where the Curnamona Province forms a salient into the younger accretionary terrane, here, the fast axis of anisotropy follows the boundary almost exactly, and is virtually coincident with magnetic lineations extracted from aeromagnetic data. To the east of this boundary beneath the Lachlan orogen, a region masked by the Cenozoic Murray Basin, the fast axis of anisotropy becomes strongly curved and traces out a semicircular pattern with a radius of 200-250 km. Farther east, the fast axis of anisotropy returns to a dominantly north-south orientation. These new findings provide strong observational support to recent geodynamic modeling results that demonstrate how large-scale oroclinal structures can become embedded in accretionary mountain belts. © 2014 Geological Society of America.

Strong, Multi-Scale Heterogeneity in Earth’s Lowermost Mantle

The core mantle boundary (CMB) separates Earth’s liquid iron outer core from the solid but slowly convecting mantle. The detailed structure and dynamics of the mantle within ~300 km of this interface remain enigmatic: it is a complex region, which exhibits thermal, compositional and phase-related heterogeneity, isolated pockets of partial melt and strong variations in seismic velocity and anisotropy. Nonetheless, characterising the structure of this region is crucial to a better understanding of the mantle’s thermo-chemical evolution and the nature of core-mantle interactions. In this study, we examine the heterogeneity spectrum from a recent P-wave tomographic model, which is based upon trans-dimensional and hierarchical Bayesian imaging. Our tomographic technique avoids explicit model parameterization, smoothing and damping. Spectral analyses reveal a multi-scale wavelength content and a power of heterogeneity that is three times larger than previous estimates. Inter alia, the resulting heterogeneity spectrum gives a more complete picture of the lowermost mantle and provides a bridge between the long-wavelength features obtained in global S-wave models and the short-scale dimensions of seismic scatterers. The evidence that we present for strong, multi-scale lowermost mantle heterogeneity has important implications for the nature of lower mantle dynamics and prescribes complex boundary conditions for Earth’s geodynamo.

On the Nature of the P-Wave Velocity Gradient in the Inner Core beneath Central America

We conduct an experiment to investigate whether linearity in the observed velocity gradient in the volume of the inner core sampled by the PKP ray paths beneath Central America is a robust approximation. Instead of solving an optimization problem, we approach it within the Bayesian inference. This is an ensemble approach, where model specification is relaxed so that instead of only one solution, groups of reasonable models are acceptable. Furthermore, in transdimensional Bayesian inference used here, the number of basis functions needed to model observations is by itself an unknown. Our modeling reveals that in the ensemble of models, the most likely are those containing only 2 nodes (linear trend). Thus our result justifies the assumption used for the determination of inner core rotation with respect to the rest of the mantle that the observed gradient is constant in its nature (linear). Recent observations in seismology suggest that it is likely that the spatial variability in elastic parameters is a widespread phenomenon in the inner core. Future array observations will further constrain spatial extent and magnitude of velocity changes and show whether there is a significant difference between these observations in the two quasi-hemispheres of the inner core.