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

Abstract

Besides the improved method we also use more data than Kind et al. [1996]. We have added teleseismic recordings of the dense wide-angle German Depth Profiling of Tibet and the Himalayas (GEDEPTH) deployment, which proved to be very successful because of the close spacing of these stations. We have also added data from the permanent broadband station Lhasa (LSA), permitting a laterally extended view into the lithosphere and upper mantle.The passive seismological part of INDEPTH II lasted from May until October 1994. Fifteen Reftek recording stations were operated in that time period. Nine stations were equipped with Guralp 3T broadband seismometers, and six with 1-Hz Mark L-4 seismometers. They were installed from the high Himalaya to approximately 150km north of the 27,491

Seismic signature of the collision between the east Tibetan escape flow and the Sichuan Basin

“…The resultant crustal shortening is accommodated by the subduction of the Indian lithosphere below the Tibetan lithosphere, as shown by numerous studies using receiver functions and tomographic methods , Wittlinger et al, 2004, Kumar et al, 2006, Li et al, 2008a. The Indian crust is probably separating from the mantle lithosphere and propagating as far as central Tibet at a shallow angle (Yuan et al 1997, Li et al, 2008aRoyden et al, 2008;Nabelek et al 2009;Zhang and Klempere, 2010), whereas the mantle lithosphere itself Wenchuan earthquake could not be well modeled with crustal deformation mechanism from only middle/lower crustal escape, and suggests that vertical force contribution to crustal deformation beneath Longmenshan and East Tibet could not be excluded (Zhang et al, 2008).…”

Receiver function images of the Hellenic subduction zone and comparison to microseismicity

“…We computed P receiver functions (e.g. Langston, 1977;Owens et al, 1984;Kind and Vinnik, 1988;Yuan et al, 1997;Kosarev et al, 1999) for all stations. The processing steps used in this paper are similar to those described by Sodoudi et al (2006).…”

Geometry of the Pamir‐Hindu Kush intermediate‐depth earthquake zone from local seismic data

“…It is not clear whether a Rayleigh-Taylor instability, which is a ductile process, would be capable of creating any seismicity at all. Indeed, well-constrained mantle downwellings beneath Tibet [Tilmann et al, 2003], the Andes [Schurr et al, 2006], the Colorado plateau [Levander et al, 2011], and the Sierra Nevada [Zandt et al, 2004] take place aseismically. Lorinczi and Houseman [2009] could reproduce strain rates measured for the Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic zone by numerically simulating a narrow lithospheric downwelling.…”

“…Since the involved material is most likely of continental origin (see argumentation above), the underthrusting of continental India beneath Eurasia, occurring in along-strike continuity of active processes in the Himalayas and beneath the Tibetan Plateau [e.g., Yuan et al, 1997;Kosarev et al, 1999;Kind et al, 2002;Nábelek et al, 2009;Kind and Yuan, 2010], could provide the host material for Hindu Kush earthquakes [as first proposed by Coward and Butler, 1985]. Since its onset, the deformation front of the India-Eurasia collision has propagated southwards from the Indus-Yarlung Suture (Figure 1) to the MFT in the Indian plate.…”