A review of the geologic history of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen suggests that at least 1400 km of north-south shortening has been absorbed by the orogen since the onset of the Indo-Asian collision at about 70 Ma. Significant crustal shortening, which leads to eventual construction of the Cenozoic Tibetan plateau, began more or less synchronously in the Eocene (50–40 Ma) in the Tethyan Himalaya in the south, and in the Kunlun Shan and the Qilian Shan some 1000–1400 km in the north. The Paleozoic and Mesozoic tectonic histories in the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen exerted a strong control over the Cenozoic strain history and strain distribution. The presence of widespread Triassic flysch complex in the Songpan-Ganzi-Hoh Xil and the Qiangtang terranes can be spatially correlated with Cenozoic volcanism and thrusting in central Tibet. The marked difference in seismic properties of the crust and the upper mantle between southern and central Tibet is a manifestation of both Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonics. The form...

Geologic Evolution of the Himalayan-Tibetan Orogen

Two end member models of how the high elevations in Tibet formed are (i) continuous thickening and widespread viscous flow of the crust and mantle of the entire plateau and (ii) time-dependent, localized shear between coherent lithospheric blocks. Recent studies of Cenozoic deformation, magmatism, and seismic structure lend support to the latter. Since India collided with Asia ∼55 million years ago, the rise of the high Tibetan plateau likely occurred in three main steps, by successive growth and uplift of 300- to 500-kilometer-wide crustal thrust-wedges. The crust thickened, while the mantle, decoupled beneath gently dipping shear zones, did not. Sediment infilling, bathtub-like, of dammed intermontane basins formed flat high plains at each step. The existence of magmatic belts younging northward implies that slabs of Asian mantle subducted one after another under ranges north of the Himalayas. Subduction was oblique and accompanied by extrusion along the left lateral strike-slip faults that slice Tibet's east side. These mechanisms, akin to plate tectonics hidden by thickening crust, with slip-partitioning, account for the dominant growth of the Tibet Plateau toward the east and northeast.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/294/5547/1671.full.pdf

Oblique Stepwise Rise and Growth of the Tibet Plateau

We have developed an efficient method to determine high-resolution hypocenter locations over large distances. The location method incorporates ordinary absolute travel-time measurements and/or cross-correlation P-and S-wave differential travel-time measurements. Residuals between observed and theoretical travel-time differences (or double-differences) are minimized for pairs of earthquakes at each station while linking together all observed event-station pairs. A least-squares solu- tion is found by iteratively adjusting the vector difference between hypocentral pairs. The double-difference algorithm minimizes errors due to unmodeled velocity struc- ture without the use of station corrections. Because catalog and cross-correlation data are combined into one system of equations, interevent distances within multiplets are determined to the accuracy of the cross-correlation data, while the relative lo- cations between multiplets and uncorrelated events are simultaneously determined to the accuracy of the absolute travel-time data. Statistical resampling methods are used to estimate data accuracy and location errors. Uncertainties in double-difference locations are improved by more than an order of magnitude compared to catalog locations. The algorithm is tested, and its performance is demonstrated on two clus- ters of earthquakes located on the northern Hayward fault, California. There it col- lapses the diffuse catalog locations into sharp images of seismicity and reveals hor- izontal lineations of hypocenters that define the narrow regions on the fault where stress is released by brittle failure.

/pdf/a-double-difference-earthquake-location-algorithm-method-and-13ttz2fahg.pdf

A Double-Difference Earthquake Location Algorithm: Method and Application to the Northern Hayward Fault, California

A model for the generation of intermediate and silicic igneous rocks is presented, based on experimental data and numerical modelling. The model is directed at subduction-related magmatism, but has general applicability to magmas generated in other plate tectonic settings, including continental rift zones. In the model mantlederived hydrous basalts emplaced as a succession of sills into the lower crust generate a deep crustal hot zone. Numerical modelling of the hot zone shows that melts are generated from two distinct sources; partial crystallization of basalt sills to produce residual H2O-rich melts; and partial melting of pre-existing crustal rocks. Incubation times between the injection of the first sill and generation of residual melts from basalt crystallization are controlled by the initial geotherm, the magma input rate and the emplacement depth. After this incubation period, the melt fraction and composition of residual melts are controlled by the temperature of the crust into which the basalt is intruded. Heat and H2O transfer from the crystallizing basalt promote partial melting of the surrounding crust, which can include meta-sedimentary and meta-igneous basement rocks and earlier basalt intrusions. Mixing of residual and crustal partial melts leads to diversity in isotope and trace element chemistry. Hot zone melts are H2O-rich. Consequently, they have low viscosity and density, and can readily detach from their source and ascend rapidly. In the case of adiabatic ascent the magma attains a super-liquidus state, because of the relative slopes of the adiabat and the liquidus. This leads to resorption of any entrained crystals or country rock xenoliths. Crystallization begins only when the ascending magma intersects its H2O-saturated liquidus at shallow depths. Decompression and degassing are the driving forces behind crystallization, which takes place at shallow depth on timescales of decades or less. Degassing and crystallization at shallow depth lead to large increases in viscosity and stalling of the magma to form volcano-feeding magma chambers and shallow plutons. It is proposed that chemical diversity in arc magmas is largely acquired in the lower crust, whereas textural diversity is related to shallow-level crystallization.

/pdf/the-genesis-of-intermediate-and-silicic-magmas-in-deep-3g95p0zv3p.pdf

The Genesis of Intermediate and Silicic Magmas in Deep Crustal Hot Zones

Recent interpretations of Himalayan–Tibetan tectonics have proposed that channel flow in the middle to lower crust can explain outward growth of the Tibetan plateau1,2,3, and that ductile extrusion of high-grade metamorphic rocks between coeval normal- and thrust-sense shear zones can explain exhumation of the Greater Himalayan sequence4,5,6,7. Here we use coupled thermal–mechanical numerical models to show that these two processes—channel flow and ductile extrusion—may be dynamically linked through the effects of surface denudation focused at the edge of a plateau that is underlain by low-viscosity material. Our models provide an internally self-consistent explanation for many observed features of the Himalayan–Tibetan system8,9,10.

Himalayan tectonics explained by extrusion of a low-viscosity crustal channel coupled to focused surface denudation

INTRODUCTION 

The calculation of travel times and ray paths of seismic phases for a specified velocity model of the Earth has always been a fundamental need of seismologists In recent years, the number of different phases used in analysis has been growing, as has the availability of new Earth models, especially models developed from detailed regional studies These factors highlight the need for versatile utilities that allow the calculation of travel times and ray paths of (ideally) any conceivable seismic phase passing through (ideally) arbitrary velocity models The method of Buland and Chapman (1983) provides significant progress toward this need by allowing for the computation of times and paths of any rays passing through arbitrary spherically symmetric velocity models The implementation of this method through the ttimes software program (Kennett and Engdahl, 1991) for a limited number of velocity models and a standard set of seismic phases has been widely

/pdf/the-taup-toolkit-flexible-seismic-travel-time-and-raypath-g3zgcpm84s.pdf

The TauP Toolkit: Flexible Seismic Travel-Time and Raypath Utilities

Shear-coupled teleseismic P waves sampling the interior of the Tibetan plateau provide evidence of systematic variations in crustal structure. The crust thins by up to 20 km from south to north with a concomitant increase in Poisson's ratio from normal values in the south to unusually high values in the north. This suggests that the crust of the northern plateau is partially melted due to high temperatures. These changes imply spatial and perhaps temporal variations in the way the elevation of the high plateau is created and maintained.

Implications of crustal property variations for models of Tibetan plateau evolution

Broadband receiver functions developed from teleseismic P waveforms recorded on the midperiod passband of Regional Seismic Test Network station RSCP are inverted for vertical velocity structure beneath the Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee. The detailed broadband receiver functions are obtained by stacking source-equalizd horizontal components of teleseismic P waveforms. The resulting receiver functions are most sensitive to the shear velocity structure near the station. A time domain inversion routine utilizes the radial receiver function to determine this structure assuming a crustal model parameterized by many thin, flat-lying, homogeneous layers. Lateral changes in structure are identified by examining azimuthal variations in the vertical structure. The results reveal significant rapid lateral changes in the midcrustal structure beneath the station that are interpreted in relation to the origin of the East Continent Gravity High located northeast of RSCP. The results from events arriving from the northeast show a high-velocity midcrustal layer not present in results from the southeast azimuth. This velocity structure can be shown to support the idea that this feature is part of a Keweenawan rift system. Another interesting feature of the derived velocity models is the indication that the crust-mantle boundary beneath the Cumberland Plateau is a thick, probably laminated transition zonemore » between the depths of 40 and 55 km, a result consistent with interpretations of early refraction work in the area.« less

Seismic evidence for an ancient rift beneath the Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee: A detailed analysis of broadband teleseismic P waveforms

Seismic data provide images of crust–mantle interactions during ongoing removal of the dense batholithic root beneath the southern Sierra Nevada mountains in California. The removal appears to have initiated between 10 and 3 Myr ago with a Rayleigh–Taylor-type instability, but with a pronounced asymmetric flow into a mantle downwelling (drip) beneath the adjacent Great Valley. A nearly horizontal shear zone accommodated the detachment of the ultramafic root from its granitoid batholith. With continuing flow into the mantle drip, viscous drag at the base of the remaining ~35-km-thick crust has thickened the crust by ~7 km in a narrow welt beneath the western flank of the range. Adjacent to the welt and at the top of the drip, a V-shaped cone of crust is being dragged down tens of kilometres into the core of the mantle drip, causing the disappearance of the Moho in the seismic images. Viscous coupling between the crust and mantle is therefore apparently driving present-day surface subsidence.

/pdf/active-foundering-of-a-continental-arc-root-beneath-the-1fri2gfhso.pdf

Active foundering of a continental arc root beneath the southern Sierra Nevada in California

Eleven broadband digital seismic stations were deployed across the central Tibetan Plateau in the first extensive passive-source experiment attempted within the Tibetan Plateau. One year of recording resulted in 186 event-station pairs which we analyze to determine the characteristics of shear wave splitting in the upper mantle beneath the array. Measurements of the fast polarization direction (ϕ) and delay time (δt) for SKS and direct S arrivals reveal systematic variations along the north-south oriented array. In the north central region of the plateau, very large delay times are observed at three stations, the largest of which is BUDO with of δt=2.4 s. However, at TUNL, which is off the northern edge of the plateau and 110 km from BUDO, and at sites in the south central plateau, δt decreases by nearly a factor of 3. We also observe systematic rotation of ϕ from about 45° (NE) to 90° (E-W) from south to north along the array. A previously identified zone of inefficient Sn propagation correlates well with our region of large δt observations. The large delay times suggest that a relateively high number of anisotropic crystals are preferentially alligned within the mantle-lid, beneath the north central portion of the Tibetan Plateau. In most cases, fast polarization directions appear to be parallel to surface geologic features suggesting as much as 200 km of the upper mantle has been involved in the collisional deformation that has produced the Tibetan Plateau.

Thomas J. Owens

Papers

The TauP Toolkit: Flexible Seismic Travel-Time and Raypath Utilities

Implications of crustal property variations for models of Tibetan plateau evolution

Seismic evidence for an ancient rift beneath the Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee: A detailed analysis of broadband teleseismic P waveforms

Active foundering of a continental arc root beneath the southern Sierra Nevada in California

Shear wave anisotropy beneath the Tibetan Plateau