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AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Keywords

  • Tibetan crust
  • continental collision
  • receiver functions

Index Terms

  • Seismology: Body waves
  • Seismology: Continental crust
  • Tectonophysics: Continental margins: convergent

Abstract

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L24304, 5 PP., 2009
doi:10.1029/2009GL040457

Northward thinning of Tibetan crust revealed by virtual seismic profiles

Tai-Lin Tseng

Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Wang-Ping Chen

Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA

Robert L. Nowack

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

A new approach of constructing deep-penetrating seismic profiles reveals significant, regional variations in crustal thickness under near-constant elevation of Tibet. Over distances of hundreds of kilometers, the crust is as thick as 75 km in southern Tibet but shoals to just over 60 km under the Qiangtang terrane in central Tibet where the deviation from Airy isostasy is equivalent to a thickness of over 10 km in missing crust. Northward thinning of crust occurs gradually over a distance of about 200 km where mechanical deformation, instead of pervasive magmatism, also seems to have disrupted the crust-mantle interface.

Received 11 August 2009; accepted 20 November 2009; published 18 December 2009.

Citation: Tseng, T.-L., W.-P. Chen, and R. L. Nowack (2009), Northward thinning of Tibetan crust revealed by virtual seismic profiles, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L24304, doi:10.1029/2009GL040457.

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