scholarly journals Growth of primordial continents by cycles of oceanic lithosphere subductions: Evidence from tilted seismic anisotropy supported by geochemical and petrological findings

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Vladislav Babuška ◽  
Jaroslava Plomerová

Cratonic North America is composed of a cluster of Archaean microcontinents centred on the Canadian shield, and juvenile Proterozoic crust that lies mainly buried beneath the sedimentary cover of the western and southern interior platforms. The shield is underlain by an anomalous low-temperature mantle root that is absent beneath the platform. As there appears to be no systematic difference in crustal thickness or density between the shield and the platform, the long-lived arching of the shield implies an intrinsic buoyancy imparted by the mantle root that more than offsets its colder temperature. Isotopic and seismic anisotropy data indicate an Archaean age for the mantle root, close to the time of formation of the overlying crust. The preferential development of the mantle root beneath Archaean crust is consistent with an origin by imbrication of partly subducted slabs of highly depleted oceanic lithosphere, assuming that buoyant subduction was more common in the Archaean. Formation of the mantle root was not dependent on collisional orogenesis, as has been suggested, but the Archaean cratonic mantle was sufficiently buoyant and refractory to survive later tectonic thickening. The mantle root persists beneath Archaean crust that was transected by mafic dyke swarms and subjected to short-lived episodes of post-orogenic crustal melting, but the root is reduced at mantle plume initiation sites. The partitioning of Archaean and Proterozoic crust between the shield and the platform, respectively, causes the shield to misrepresent Precambrian crust as a whole. Studies of the shield falsely conclude that a high percentage of Precambrian crust formed in the Archaean, and that the Proterozoic was characterized by epicontinental volcanism and sedimentation, and crustal ‘reworking’. Furthermore, the isotopic ratios of detritus eroded from the craton may tend to overestimate the mean age of continental crust.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Mark ◽  
Douglas Wiens ◽  
Daniel Lizarralde

<p><span>Bend faults formed in oceanic lithosphere approaching deep ocean trenches promote water circulation and the formation of hydrous minerals. As the plate subducts, these minerals can dehydrate into the mantle wedge, generating the melts that feed arc volcanoes, or subduct fully into the deeper mantle. Balancing the global water budget requires an estimate of the amount of water recycled to the mantle by subduction, but current estimates for water fluxes at subduction zones span several orders of magnitude, mainly because of large uncertainties in the amount of water carried in the lithospheric mantle of the incoming plate. </span></p><p><span>We use active source seismic refraction data collected on the incoming plate at the Marianas trench to measure azimuthal seismic anisotropy in the uppermost mantle, and assess the degree of faulting and associated serpentinization of the uppermost mantle based on spatial variations in the observed anisotropy. We find that the fast direction of anisotropy varies with distance from the trench, rotating from APM-parallel at the eastern side of the study area to approximately fault-parallel near the trench. The fast direction orientations suggest that a coherent set of bend-faults are beginning to form at least 200 km out from the trench, although the extrinsic anisotropy signal from the faults does not substantially overprint the signal from preexisting mineral fabrics until the plate is ~100 km from the trench. The average (isotropic) mantle velocity decreases slightly as the plate nears the trench. Preliminary interpretation suggests that the observed spatial variations in anisotropy can be explained by serpentinization localized along pervasive, trench-parallel faults or joints.</span></p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 486 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-102
Author(s):  
N. M. Sushchevskaya ◽  
B. V. Belyatsky ◽  
G. L. Leitchenkov ◽  
V. G. Batanova ◽  
A. V. Sobolev

Mesozoic dikes associated with the Karoo plume were studied within the East Antarctica where at Queen Maud Land on the Almannryggen massif high-Ti magnesian Fe-basalts were found. It is assumed that such basalts originate by means of the pyroxenite-containing mantle melting. The isotopic characteristics of the studied dolerites reflect the composition of the pyroxenite source - the ancient oceanic lithosphere (ЕМI), submerged at the mantle depths of 150-170 km in the paleosubduction zone of the Gondwanian continent and transformed 180 m.y. ago into the pyroxenite melt when interacting with the plume mantle peridotite.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Razec Cezar Sampaio Pinto da Silva Torres ◽  
Leandro Di Bartolo

ABSTRACT. Reverse time migration (RTM) is one of the most powerful methods used to generate images of the subsurface. The RTM was proposed in the early 1980s, but only recently it has been routinely used in exploratory projects involving complex geology – Brazilian pre-salt, for example. Because the method uses the two-way wave equation, RTM is able to correctly image any kind of geological environment (simple or complex), including those with anisotropy. On the other hand, RTM is computationally expensive and requires the use of computer clusters. This paper proposes to investigate the influence of anisotropy on seismic imaging through the application of RTM for tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media in pre-stack synthetic data. This work presents in detail how to implement RTM for TTI media, addressing the main issues and specific details, e.g., the computational resources required. A couple of simple models results are presented, including the application to a BP TTI 2007 benchmark model.Keywords: finite differences, wave numerical modeling, seismic anisotropy. Migração reversa no tempo em meios transversalmente isotrópicos inclinadosRESUMO. A migração reversa no tempo (RTM) é um dos mais poderosos métodos utilizados para gerar imagens da subsuperfície. A RTM foi proposta no início da década de 80, mas apenas recentemente tem sido rotineiramente utilizada em projetos exploratórios envolvendo geologia complexa, em especial no pré-sal brasileiro. Por ser um método que utiliza a equação completa da onda, qualquer configuração do meio geológico pode ser corretamente tratada, em especial na presença de anisotropia. Por outro lado, a RTM é dispendiosa computacionalmente e requer o uso de clusters de computadores por parte da indústria. Este artigo apresenta em detalhes uma implementação da RTM para meios transversalmente isotrópicos inclinados (TTI), abordando as principais dificuldades na sua implementação, além dos recursos computacionais exigidos. O algoritmo desenvolvido é aplicado a casos simples e a um benchmark padrão, conhecido como BP TTI 2007.Palavras-chave: diferenças finitas, modelagem numérica de ondas, anisotropia sísmica.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Frothingham ◽  
◽  
Kevin H. Mahan ◽  
Vera Schulte-Pelkum ◽  
Jonathan S. Caine

2021 ◽  
pp. 228954
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Bernard ◽  
Vera Schulte-Pelkum ◽  
Whitney M. Behr
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-173
Author(s):  
Omry Volk ◽  
Robert S. White ◽  
Simone Pilia ◽  
Robert G. Green ◽  
John Maclennan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 224 (3) ◽  
pp. 1684-1704
Author(s):  
Alexandra Mauerberger ◽  
Valérie Maupin ◽  
Ólafur Gudmundsson ◽  
Frederik Tilmann

SUMMARY We use the recently deployed ScanArray network of broad-band stations covering most of Norway and Sweden as well as parts of Finland to analyse the propagation of Rayleigh waves in Scandinavia. Applying an array beamforming technique to teleseismic records from ScanArray and permanent stations in the study region, in total 159 stations with a typical station distance of about 70 km, we obtain phase velocities for three subregions, which collectively cover most of Scandinavia (excluding southern Norway). The average phase dispersion curves are similar for all three subregions. They resemble the dispersion previously observed for the South Baltic craton and are about 1 per cent slower than the North Baltic shield phase velocities for periods between 40 and 80 s. However, a remarkable sin(1θ) phase velocity variation with azimuth is observed for periods >35 s with a 5 per cent deviation between the maximum and minimum velocities, more than the overall lateral variation in average velocity. Such a variation, which is incompatible with seismic anisotropy, occurs in northern Scandinavia and southern Norway/Sweden but not in the central study area. The maximum and minimum velocities were measured for backazimuths of 120° and 300°, respectively. These directions are perpendicular to a step in the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary (LAB) inferred by previous studies in southern Norway/Sweden, suggesting a relation to large lithospheric heterogeneity. In order to test this hypothesis, we carried out 2-D full-waveform modeling of Rayleigh wave propagation in synthetic models which incorporate a steep gradient in the LAB in combination with a pronounced reduction in the shear velocity below the LAB. This setup reproduces the observations qualitatively, and results in higher phase velocities for propagation in the direction of shallowing LAB, and lower ones for propagation in the direction of deepening LAB, probably due to the interference of forward scattered and reflected surface wave energy with the fundamental mode. Therefore, the reduction in lithospheric thickness towards southern Norway in the south, and towards the Atlantic ocean in the north provide a plausible explanation for the observed azimuthal variations.


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