Modeling Lithospheric Thickness Along the Conjugate South Atlantic Passive Margins Implies Asymmetric Rift Initiation

The lithospheric architecture of passive margins is crucial for understanding the tectonic processes that caused the breakup of Gondwana. We highlight the evolution of the South Atlantic passive margins by a simple thermal lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) model based on onset and cessation of rifting, crustal thickness, and stretching factors. We simulate lithospheric thinning and select the LAB as the T = 1,330°C isotherm, which is calculated by 1D advection and diffusion. Stretching factors and margin geometry are adjusted to state-of-the-art data sets, giving a thermal LAB model that is especially designed for the continental margins of the South Atlantic. Our LAB model shows distinct variations along the passive margins that are not imaged by global LAB models, indicating different rifting mechanisms. For example, we model up to 200 km deep lithosphere in the South American Santos Basin and shallow lithosphere less than 60 km in the Namibe Basin offshore Africa. These two conjugate basins reflect a strong asymmetry in LAB depth that resembles variations in margin width. In a Gondwana reconstruction, we discuss these patterns together with seismic velocity perturbations for the Central and Austral Segments of the margins. The shallow lithosphere in the Namibe Basin correlates with signatures of the Angola Dome, attributed to epeirogenic uplift in the Neogene, suggesting an additional component of post-breakup lithospheric thinning

Efficient 3-D Large-Scale Forward Modeling and Inversion of Gravitational Fields in Spherical Coordinates With Application to Lunar Mascons

A novel efficient forward modeling algorithm of gravitational fields in spherical coordinates is developed for 3D large-scale gravity inversion problems. 3D Gauss-Legendre quadrature (GLQ) is used to calculate the gravitational fields of mass distributions discretized into tesseroids. Equivalence relations in the kernel matrix of the forward-modeling are exploited to decrease storage and computation time. The numerical investigations demonstrate that the computation time of the proposed algorithm is reduced by approximately two orders of magnitude, and the memory requirement is reduced by N'l times compared with the traditional GLQ method, where N'l is the number of model elements in the longitudinal direction. These significant improvements in computational efficiency and storage make it possible to calculate and store the dense Jacobian matrix in 3D large-scale gravity inversions. The equivalence relations could be equally applied to the Taylor series method or combined with the adaptive discretization to ensure high accuracies

Efficient 3D large-scale forward-modeling and inversion of gravitational fields in spherical coordinates with application to lunar mascons

An efficient forward modeling algorithm for calculation of gravitational fields in spherical coordinates is developed for 3D large‐scale gravity inversion problems. 3D Gauss‐Legendre quadrature (GLQ) is used to calculate the gravitational fields of mass distributions discretized into tesseroids. Equivalence relations in the kernel matrix of the forward‐modeling are exploited to decrease storage and computation time. The numerical tests demonstrate that the computation time of the proposed algorithm is reduced by approximately two orders of magnitude, and the memory requirement is reduced by N'λ times compared with the traditional GLQ method, where N'λ is the number of the model elements in the longitudinal direction. These significant improvements in computational efficiency and storage make it possible to calculate and store the dense Jacobian matrix in 3D large‐scale gravity inversions. The equivalence relations can be applied to the Taylor series method or combined with the adaptive discretization to ensure high accuracy. To further illustrate the capability of the algorithm, we present a regional synthetic example. The inverted results show density distributions consistent with the actual model. The computation took about 6.3 hours and 0.88 GB of memory compared with about a dozen days and 245.86 GB for the traditional 3D GLQ method. Finally, the proposed algorithm is applied to the gravity field derived from the latest lunar gravity model GL1500E. 3D density distributions of the Imbrium and Serenitatis basins are obtained, and high‐density bodies are found at the depths 10‐60 km, likely indicating a significant uplift of the high‐density mantle beneath the two mascon basins.</p

How rigid is Europe's lithosphere?

The integrated strength distribution and variations of the effective elastic plate thickness (Te) have been estimated for the European lithosph\ue8re based on thermal and rheological data for the crust and upper mantle. The new results show a significant spatial variability demonstrating that both 'jelly sandwich' and 'cr\ue8me br bl\ue9e' models might be valid depending on lithospheric physical conditions. In most of Europe crustal strength provides a relatively large contribution (50%) to the lithospheric strength. Western Europe appears mostly characterized by mechanically decoupled lithospheric layers, low strength and Te < 30 km. The contribution of the mechanically strong mantle to Te is low in most parts of western Europe. No clear relationship between Te and thermal age is found in the continent: the values for the tectonic provinces older than 85 Ma are significantly smaller than theoretically expected for their age and crustal thickness, whereas the opposite is true for the younger provinces

Regional Geophysics of the Caribbean and Northern South America: Implications for Tectonics

Abstract The Caribbean plate is an enclosed oceanic basin whose formation and evolution are controversial. In the most commonly accepted model, the Caribbean plate is mainly composed of the Caribbean Large Igneous Province (CLIP) and the buoyant characteristic of this oceanic plateau resisted subduction and allowed an eastward migration to its present position north of South America. In this study, we integrate a broad range of geophysical and geomorphological data to define structural elements and present‐day tectonics of the Caribbean plate and the surrounding region. We present a Bouguer gravity anomaly map and a new crustal thickness map that documents large areas of normal‐thickness oceanic crust within the Venezuela and Colombia basins of the Caribbean plate. Selected cross sections of seismicity and P‐wave anomalies from a seismic tomographic model depict the present‐day geometry of subducting oceanic plates within the Caribbean region. We observe that rather than resisting subduction, as expected for the thick crust of a buoyant large igneous province, the subduction of the Caribbean plate can be traced to a depth of 600 km beneath NW South America. This, together with the crustal thickness map, implies that a significant area of the Caribbean plate, including the subducted portion, is composed of normal‐thickness oceanic crust. As proposed by the Pacific origin model, the Caribbean plate likely migrated eastward from the Pacific Ocean as an oceanic plate mostly with normal‐thickness crust and limited portions of the crust thickened by hot spot volcanism (CLIP)

NACr14: A 3D model for the crustal structure of the North American Continent

Based on the large number of crustal seismic experiments carried out in the last decades we create NACr14, a 3D crustal model of the North American continent at a resolution of 1 degrees x 1 degrees. We present maps of thickness and average velocities of the main layers that comprise the North American crystalline crust, obtained from the most recent seismic crustal models within the USGS crustal structure database. However, the crustal data are unevenly distributed and in some cases discrepancies exist between published models. In order to construct a consistent 3D crustal model with three layers in the crystalline crust, we refrained from a direct interpolation of the crustal seismic parameters in the database. Instead, we implemented the following sequence of steps: 1. Definition of the geometry of the main tectonic provinces of North America; 2. Selection and evaluation of the reliability of seismic crustal models in the database; 3. Estimation of the P-wave seismic velocity and thickness of the upper, middle and lower crust for each tectonic province; 4. Estimation of the interpolated Pn velocity distribution. The resulting average velocity of the crystalline crust is mostly consistent with that of the seismic points. The main variations of the structure of the crystalline crust of North America displayed in the model can be related to its tectonic evolution. The model, available in a digital form, can be used in various geophysical applications, such as the correction for the crustal effects in gravity and seismic tomography and models of dynamic topography, in order to detect heterogeneities characterizing the underlying upper mantle

The Challenge of Spatial Resolutions for GRACE-Based Estimates Volume Changes of Larger Man-Made Lake: The Case of China’s Three Gorges Reservoir in the Yangtze River

The Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) in China, with the largest dam in the world, stores a large volume of water and may influence the Earth&rsquo;s gravity field on sub-seasonal to interannual timescales. Significant changes of the total water storage (TWS) might be detectable by satellite-based data provided by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. To detect these store water changes, effects of other factors are to be removed first from these data due to band-limited representation of near-surface mass changes from GRACE. Here, we evaluated three current popular land surface models (LSMs) basing on in situ measurements and found that the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) demonstrates higher correlation than other analyzed models with the in-situ rainfall measurement. Then we used the WGHM outputs to remove climate-induced TWS changes, such as surface water storage, soil, canopy, snow, and groundwater storage. The residual results (GRACE minus WGHM) indicated a strong trend (3.85 &plusmn; 2 km3/yr) that is significantly higher than the TGR analysis and hindcast experiments (2.29 &plusmn; 1 km3/yr) based on in-situ water level measurements. We also estimated the seepage response to the TGR filling, contributions from other anthropogenic dams, and used in-situ gravity and GPS observations to evaluate dominant factors responsible for the GRACE-based overestimate of the TGR volume change. We found that the modeled seepage variability through coarse-grained materials explained most of the difference between the GRACE based estimate of TGR volume changes and in situ measurements, but the agreement with in-situ gravity observations is considerably lower. In contrast, the leakage contribution from 13 adjacent reservoirs explained ~74% of the TGR volume change derived from GRACE and WGHM. Our results demonstrate that GRACE-based overestimate TGR mass change mainly from the contribution of surrounding artificial reservoirs and underestimated TWS variations in WGHM simulations due to the large uncertainty of WGHM in groundwater component. In additional, this study also indicates that reservoir or lake volume changes can be reliably derived from GRACE data when they are used in combination with relevant complementary observations

Modeling Lithospheric Thickness Along the Conjugate South Atlantic Passive Margins Implies Asymmetric Rift Initiation

The lithospheric architecture of passive margins is crucial for understanding the tectonic processes that caused the breakup of Gondwana. We highlight the evolution of the South Atlantic passive margins by a simple thermal lithosphere‐asthenosphere boundary (LAB) model based on onset and cessation of rifting, crustal thickness, and stretching factors. We simulate lithospheric thinning and select the LAB as the T = 1,330°C isotherm, which is calculated by 1D advection and diffusion. Stretching factors and margin geometry are adjusted to state‐of‐the‐art data sets, giving a thermal LAB model that is especially designed for the continental margins of the South Atlantic. Our LAB model shows distinct variations along the passive margins that are not imaged by global LAB models, indicating different rifting mechanisms. For example, we model up to 200 km deep lithosphere in the South American Santos Basin and shallow lithosphere less than 60 km in the Namibe Basin offshore Africa. These two conjugate basins reflect a strong asymmetry in LAB depth that resembles variations in margin width. In a Gondwana reconstruction, we discuss these patterns together with seismic velocity perturbations for the Central and Austral Segments of the margins. The shallow lithosphere in the Namibe Basin correlates with signatures of the Angola Dome, attributed to epeirogenic uplift in the Neogene, suggesting an additional component of post‐breakup lithospheric thinning.Plain Language Summary: Passive margins mark the transition zone from a continent to the ocean without being an active boundary of tectonic plates. They are typical for all continents on the globe. In the South Atlantic, the passive margins are located adjacent to the eastern coastline of South America and the western coastline of Africa. Studying the architecture of passive margins is essential for understanding plate tectonic history of the earth because they define how the continents once fitted together and how they broke apart. Passive margin segments on opposite sides of an ocean form so called conjugate margin pairs. Most geophysical studies of passive margins focus on the first few kilometers under the surface. However, their deeper extension to the base of the rigid shell of the earth, known as lithospheric thickness, is to a large extent unknown. Based on a simple temperature model, we find that the lithospheric thickness is highly variable and shows large variations along the South Atlantic passive margins. These differences are associated with the extension of conjugate margin pairs: where one margin is narrower than the conjugate, its lithospheric thickness is greater. This asymmetry indicates that the geodynamic processes, causing the breakup of the two continents, must have been asymmetric as well. Offshore Angola, the lithosphere is modeled shallow and matches with relatively young rock signatures. This suggests additional tectonic activity on the African side after the breakup between the two continents occurred.Key Points: A simple thermal lithosphere‐asthenosphere boundary (LAB) model for the South Atlantic passive margins has been developed. The LAB model shows distinct variations along the margins that correlate with margin widths. Conjugate margin pairs reflect an asymmetry in LAB depth patterns that are locally related to post‐breakup lithospheric thinning.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.1.3.2020.006https://www.earthbyte.org/webdav/ftp/Data_Collections/Muller_etal_2019_Tectonics/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7074000https://earthbyte.org/webdav/ftp/Data_Collections/Haas_etal_2022_Tectonics

Structure and Density of Sedimentary Basins in the Southern Part of the East-European Platform and Surrounding Area

Modern satellite gravity missions and ground gravimetry provide operational data models that can be used in various studies in geology, tectonics, and climatology, etc. In the present study, sedimentary basins in the southern part of the East European Platform and adjoining areas including the Caucasus are studied by employing the approach based on decompensative gravity anomalies. The new model of sediments, implying their thickness and density, demonstrates several important features of the sedimentary cover, which were not or differently imaged by previous studies. We found a significant redistribution of the low-dense sediments in the Black Sea. Another principal feature is the increased thickness of relatively low-dense sediments in the Eastern Greater Caucasus. The deepest part of the South Caspian basin is shifted to the north, close to the Apsheron Trough. In its present position, it is almost joined with the Terek–Caspian depression, which depth is also increased. The thickness of sediments is significantly decreased in the eastern Pre-Caspian basin. Therefore, the new sedimentary cover model gives a more detailed description of its thickness and density, reveals new features and helps in better understanding of the evolution of the basins, providing a background for further detailed studies of the region