Dynamic mechanism of the upper mantle beneath the northeastern Tibetan
Plateau - constraints from the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities
Abstract
Based on the massive teleseismic waveforms collected by the China Array
II project, we investigate the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities
(referred to as ‘410’ and ‘660’) beneath the northeastern Tibetan
Plateau. After all of the 95747 radial receiver functions are stacked
into each 0.5x0.5° grid, the P410s and P660s arrival times are Picked.
Referring to the local 3-D tomographic model, the ‘410’ and ‘660’ depths
are 416±0.6 km and 676±0.8 km, respectively, and the mantle transition
zone (MTZ) thickness is ~260 km. Considering the remote
effect of the subducted Indian Plate and Pacific Plate, we focused on
the depressed two discontinuities. In particular, along the northeastern
boundary of the Tibetan Plateau, the ‘410’ is confirmed as a dynamic
barrier to hot asthenospheric flow, which escapes from the Tibetan
Plateau and is obstructed by the rigid cratonic lithosphere in its
surrounding area. The ‘660’ is obviously affected by cold anomalies that
are delaminated or removed from the thickened lithosphere. In the
western NCC(North China Craton), combining with the depressed ‘660’ and
relatively larger P660s-P amplitude ratio, we speculate that a certain
amount of water has accumulated in the lower MTZ, while the low Vs
velocity around the 660 km depth may be related to melting. According to
previous results, we propose a mantle convection model driven by the
edge-derived convection of the subducted Pacific Plate. The cratonic
lithosphere beneath the Ordos block may also undergo slow modification.