A multi-scale approach to study the lithospheric structure of the southern Upper Rhine Graben: from seismic tomography through reflection seismics to surface geology

Abstract

A multi-scale approach to study the lithospheric structure of the southern Upper Rhine Graben: from seismic tomography through reflection seismics to surface geology Abstract This paper integrates the results of different techniques-local and regional travel time tomography, reflection seismics, and surface geology. With this integration of different techniques, working on different scales, it is possible to derive a comprehensive picture of the present-day structures in the lithosphere of the Upper Rhine Graben. It is shown that the stucture of the lithosphere is dominated by structures related to the Variscan orogeny. Late stage strike-slip reactivation of the internal faults of the Rhine Graben is observed in the field. This reactivation is of dominant influence on the geomorphology in the southern end of the Upper Rhine Graben.

Influence of Lithosphere Rheology on Seismicity in an Intracontinental Rift: The Case of the Rhine Graben

“…regime at present with predominant sinistral-normal kinematics (Schumacher, 2002;Lopes Cardozo and Granet, 2005;Homuth et al, 2014;Bertrand et al, 2018). This makes the URG one of the seismically most active areas in Germany (Henrion et al, 2020; Figure 1C).…”

“…The Upper Rhine Graben (URG) is a continental rift that extends for roughly 320 km in a NNE-SSW direction (Mayer et al, 1997;Lopes Cardozo and Granet, 2005;Barth et al, 2015) along the French-German border in Central Europe ( Figures 1A,B). It formed as a part of European Cenozoic Rift System (Ziegler, 1992) on a heterogeneous crust which was consolidated during the Variscan orogeny in the Latest Paleozoic and subsequently affected by regional subsidence during the Mesozoic (Ziegler, 1990;Franke, 2000).…”