Tectospheric structure beneath southern Africa

Details Tectospheric structure beneath southern Africa Tectospheric structure beneath southern Africa

Jul 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001georl..28.2485j&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 28, Issue 13, p. 2485-2488

Physics

77

Seismology: Lithosphere And Upper Mantle, Tectonophysics: Evolution Of The Earth, Tectonophysics: Tomography

Scientific paper

P-wave and S-wave delay times from the broad-band data of the southern Africa seismic experiment have been inverted to obtain three-dimensional images of velocity perturbations in the mantle beneath southern Africa. High velocity mantle roots appear to extend to depths of at least 250 km, and locally to depths of 300 km beneath the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons. Thick roots are confined to the Archean cratons, with no evidence for similar structures beneath the adjacent Proterozoic mobile belts. The Kaapvaal craton was modified ca. 2.05 Ga by the Bushveld magmatic event, which affected a broad swath of cratonic mantle beneath and to the west of the exposed Bushveld Complex. The mantle beneath the extended Bushveld province is characterized by seismic velocities lower than those observed in regions of undisturbed cratonic mantle. The mantle beneath the Limpopo Belt, an Archean collisional zone sandwiched between the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons, exhibits a cratonic signature.

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