Rainer Kind

Partially molten middle crust beneath southern Tibet : Synthesis of project INDEPTH results

INDEPTH geophysical and geological observations imply that a partially molten midcrustal layer exists beneath southern Tibet. This partially molten layer has been produced by crustal thickening and behaves as a fluid on the time scale of Himalayan deformation. It is confined on the south by the structurally imbricated Indian crust underlying the Tethyan and High Himalaya and is underlain, apparently, by a stiff Indian mantle lid. The results suggest that during Neogene time the underthrusting Indian crust has acted as a plunger, displacing the molten middle crust to the north while at the same time contributing to this layer by melting and ductile flow. Viewed broadly, the Neogene evolution of the Himalaya is essentially a record of the southward extrusion of the partially molten middle crust underlying southern Tibet.

Subduction and collision processes in the Central Andes constrained by converted seismic phases

The Central Andes are the Earths highest mountain belt formed by ocean–continent collision. Most of this uplift is thought to have occurred in the past 20 Myr, owing mainly to thickening of the continental crust, dominated by tectonic shortening. Here we use P-to-S (compressional-to-shear) converted teleseismic waves observed on several temporary networks in the Central Andes to image the deep structure associated with these tectonic processes. We find that the Moho (the Mohorovičić discontinuity—generally thought to separate crust from mantle) ranges from a depth of 75 km under the Altiplano plateau to 50 km beneath the 4-km-high Puna plateau. This relatively thin crust below such a high-elevation region indicates that thinning of the lithospheric mantle may have contributed to the uplift of the Puna plateau. We have also imaged the subducted crust of the Nazca oceanic plate down to 120 km depth, where it becomes invisible to converted teleseismic waves, probably owing to completion of the gabbro–eclogite transformation; this is direct evidence for the presence of kinetically delayed metamorphic reactions in subducting plates. Most of the intermediate-depth seismicity in the subducting plate stops at 120 km depth as well, suggesting a relation with this transformation. We see an intracrustal low-velocity zone, 10–20 km thick, below the entire Altiplano and Puna plateaux, which we interpret as a zone of continuing metamorphism and partial melting that decouples upper-crustal imbrication from lower-crustal thickening.

Lithospheric and upper mantle structure of southern Tibet from a seismological passive source experiment

Fifteen seismic stations were operated with about 20-km spacing in southern Tibet across the Zangbo suture (the collision zone between India and Asia) between May and October 1994 as part of the International Deep Profiling of Tibet and the Himalaya project (INDEPTH II) for wide-angle recording of the controlled source experiment and for passive earthquake recording. In addition, a dense deployment (4-km spacing) of stations within the German Depth Profiling of Tibet and the Himalayas (GEDEPTH) project also recorded a number of teleseismic earthquakes. The third data source used in this study is the records of the permanent broadband station at Lhasa. Teleseismic records have been obtained in sufficient quantity and quality to derive an image of the structure of the lithosphere and upper mantle from P-to-S converted phases. Important results are as follows. The Moho at 70–80 km and a second discontinuity at 50–60 km depth are observed over the entire profile south and north of the Zangbo suture. The data from the GEDEPTH dense array enable the detection of inclined structures penetrating the crust at the Zangbo suture. A pronounced low-velocity zone exists north of the Zangbo suture at about 10–20 km depth. The locations of the upper mantle discontinuities at 410 and 660 km depth are in agreement with the global reference model IASP91 [Kennett, 1991] over a large region of the Himalaya and southern Tibet.

The rapid drift of the Indian tectonic plate

The breakup of the supercontinent Gondwanaland into Africa, Antarctica, Australia and India about 140 million years ago, and consequently the opening of the Indian Ocean, is thought to have been caused by heating of the lithosphere from below by a large plume whose relicts are now the Marion, Kerguelen and Réunion plumes. Plate reconstructions based on palaeomagnetic data suggest that the Indian plate attained a very high speed (18–20 cm yr-1 during the late Cretaceous period) subsequent to its breakup from Gondwanaland, and then slowed to ∼5 cm yr-1 after the continental collision with Asia ∼50 Myr ago. The Australian and African plates moved comparatively less distance and at much lower speeds of 2–4 cm yr-1 (refs 3–5). Antarctica remained almost stationary. This mobility makes India unique among the fragments of Gondwanaland. Here we propose that when the fragments of Gondwanaland were separated by the plume, the penetration of their lithospheric roots into the asthenosphere were important in determining their speed. We estimated the thickness of the lithospheric plates of the different fragments of Gondwanaland around the Indian Ocean by using the shear-wave receiver function technique. We found that the fragment of Gondwanaland with clearly the thinnest lithosphere is India. The lithospheric roots in South Africa, Australia and Antarctica are between 180 and 300 km deep, whereas the Indian lithosphere extends only about 100 km deep. We infer that the plume that partitioned Gondwanaland may have also melted the lower half of the Indian lithosphere, thus permitting faster motion due to ridge push or slab pull.

The nature of the 660-kilometer upper-mantle seismic discontinuity from precursors to the PP phase

Global Seismic Network data were used to image upper-mantle seismic discontinuities. Stacks of phases that precede the PP phase, thought to be underside reflections from the upper-mantle discontinuities at depths of 410 and 660 kilometers, show that the reflection from 410 kilometers is present, but the reflection from 660 kilometers is not observed. A continuous Lamés constant λ and seismic parameter at the 660-kilometer discontinuity explain the missing underside P reflections and lead to a P-wave velocity jump of only 2 percent, whereas the S-wave velocity and density remain unchanged with respect to previous global models. The model deemphasizes the role of Lamés constant λ with regard to the shear modulus and constrains the mineralogical composition across the discontinuity.

Moho topography in the central Andes and its geodynamic implications

P-to-S converted waves at the continental Moho together with waves multiply reflected between the Earth’s surface and the Moho have been used to estimate the Moho depth and average crustal Vp/Vs variations in the central Andes. Our analysis confirms and significantly complements the Moho depth estimates previously obtained from wide-angle seismic studies and receiver functions. The resulting crustal thickness varies from about 35 km in the forearc region to more than 70 km beneath the plateau and thins (30 km) further to the east in the Chaco plains. Beneath the Andean plateau, the Moho is deeper in the north (Altiplano) and shallower in the south (Puna), where the plateau attains its maximum elevation. A non-linear relation exists between crustal thickness and elevation (and Bouguer gravity), suggesting that the crust shallower than 50^55 km is predominately felsic in contrast to a predominately mafic crust below. Such a relation also implies a 100 km thick thermal lithosphere beneath the Altiplano and with a lithospheric thinning of a few tens of kilometers beneath the Puna. Absence of expected increase in lithospheric thickness in regions of almost doubled crust strongly suggests partial removal of the mantle lithosphere beneath the entire plateau. In the Subandean ranges at 19^20‡S, the relation between altitude and crustal thickness indicates a thick lithosphere (up to 130^150 km) and lithospheric flexure. Beneath a relative topographic low at the Salar de Atacama, a thick crust (67 km) suggests that the lithosphere in this region is abnormally cold and dynamically subsided, possibly due to coupling with the subducting plate. This may be related to the strongest (Ms = 8.0) known intra-slab earthquake in the central Andes that happened very close to this region in 1950. The average crustal Vp/Vs ratio is about 1.77 for the Altiplano^Puna and it reaches the highest values (1.80^1.85) beneath the volcanic arc, indicating high ambient crustal temperatures and wide-spread intra-crustal melting. ? 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Evidence from Earthquake Data for a Partially Molten Crustal Layer in Southern Tibet

Earthquake data collected by the INDEPTH-II Passive-Source Experiment show that there is a substantial south to north variation in the velocity structure of the crust beneath southern Tibet. North of the Zangbo suture, beneath the southern Lhasa block, a midcrustal low-velocity zone is revealed by inversion of receiver functions, Rayleigh-wave phase velocities, and modeling of the radial component of teleseismic P-waveforms. Conversely, to the south beneath the Tethyan Himalaya, no low-velocity zone was observed. The presence of the midcrustal low-velocity zone in the north implies that a partially molten layer is in the middle crust beneath the northern Yadong-Gulu rift and possibly much of southern Tibet.

Rejuvenation of the lithosphere by the Hawaiian plume.

The volcanism responsible for creating the chain of the Hawaiian islands and seamounts is believed to mark the passage of the oceanic lithosphere over a mantle plume. In this picture hot material rises from great depth within a fixed narrow conduit to the surface, penetrating the moving lithosphere. Although a number of models describe possible plume–lithosphere interactions, seismic imaging techniques have not had sufficient resolution to distinguish between them. Here we apply the S-wave ‘receiver function’ technique to data of three permanent seismic broadband stations on the Hawaiian islands, to map the thickness of the underlying lithosphere. We find that under Big Island the lithosphere is 100–110 km thick, as expected for an oceanic plate 90–100 million years old that is not modified by a plume. But the lithosphere thins gradually along the island chain to about 50–60 km below Kauai. The width of the thinning is about 300 km. In this zone, well within the larger-scale topographic swell, we infer that the rejuvenation model (where the plume thins the lithosphere) is operative; however, the larger-scale topographic swell is probably supported dynamically.

The boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates below Tibet

The fate of the colliding Indian and Asian tectonic plates below the Tibetan high plateau may be visualized by, in addition to seismic tomography, mapping the deep seismic discontinuities, like the crust-mantle boundary (Moho), the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB), or the discontinuities at 410 and 660 km depth. We herein present observations of seismic discontinuities with the P and S receiver function techniques beneath central and western Tibet along two new profiles and discuss the results in connection with results from earlier profiles, which did observe the LAB. The LAB of the Indian and Asian plates is well-imaged by several profiles and suggests a changing mode of India-Asia collision in the east-west direction. From eastern Himalayan syntaxis to the western edge of the Tarim Basin, the Indian lithosphere is underthrusting Tibet at an increasingly shallower angle and reaching progressively further to the north. A particular lithospheric region was formed in northern and eastern Tibet as a crush zone between the two colliding plates, the existence of which is marked by high temperature, low mantle seismic wavespeed (correlating with late arriving signals from the 410 discontinuity), poor Sn propagation, east and southeast oriented global positioning system displacements, and strikingly larger seismic (SKS) anisotropy.

Seismic polarization anisotropy beneath the central Tibetan Plateau

SKS and SKKS shear waves recorded on the INDEPTH III seismic array deployed in central Tibet during 1998–1999 have been analyzed for the direction and extent of seismic polarization anisotropy. The 400-km-long NNW trending array extended south to north, from the central Lhasa terrane, across the Karakoram-Jiali fault system and Banggong-Nujiang suture to the central Qiangtang terrane. Substantial splitting with delay times from 1 to 2 s, and fast directions varying from E-W to NE-SW, was observed for stations in the Qiangtang terrane and northernmost Lhasa terrane. No detectable splitting was observed for stations located farther south in the central Lhasa terrane. The change in shear wave splitting characteristics occurs at 32°N, approximately coincident with the transcurrent Karakoram-Jiali fault system but ∼40 km south of the surface trace of the Banggong-Nujiang suture. This location is also near the southernmost edge of a region of high Sn attenuation and low upper mantle velocities found in previous studies. The transition between no measured splitting and strong anisotropy (2.2 s delay time) is exceptionally sharp (≤15 km), suggesting a large crustal contribution to the measured splitting. The E-W to NE-SW fast directions are broadly similar to the fast directions observed farther east along the Yadong-Golmud highway, suggesting that no large-scale change in anisotropic properties occurs in the east-west direction. However, in detail, fast directions and delay times vary over lateral distances of ∼100 km in both the N-S and E-W direction by as much as 40° and 0.5–1 s, respectively. The onset of measurable splitting at 32°N most likely marks the northern limit of the underthrusting Indian lithosphere, which is characterized by negligible polarization anisotropy. Taken in conjunction with decades of geophysical and geological observations in Tibet, the new anisotropy measurements are consistent with a model where hot and weak upper mantle beneath northern Tibet is being squeezed and sheared between the advancing Indian lithosphere to the south and the Tsaidam and Tarim lithospheres to the north and west, resulting in eastward flow and possibly thickening and subsequent detachment due to gravitational instability. In northern Tibet, crustal deformation clearly follows this large-scale deformation pattern.