The thickness and structural characteristics of the crust across Tibetan plateau from active-sources seismic profiles

The Tibetan plateau as one of the youngest orogen on the Earth was considered as the result of continent-continent collision between the Eurasian and Indian plates. The thickness and structure of the crust beneath Tibetan plateau is essential to understand deformation behavior of the plateau. Active-source seismic profiling is most available geophysical method for imaging the structure of the continental crust. The results from more than 25 active-sources seismic profiles carried out in the past twenty years were reviewed in this article. A preliminary cross crustal pattern of the Tibetan Plateau was presented and discussed. The Moho discontinuity buries at the range of 60-80 km on average and have steep ramps located roughly beneath the sutures that are compatible with the successive stacking/accretion of the former Cenozoic blocks northeastward. The deepest Moho (near 80 km) appears closely near IYS and the crustal scale thrust system beneath southern margin of Tibetan plateau suggests strong dependence on collision and non-distributed deformation there. However, the similar to 20 km order of Moho offsets hardly reappears in the inline section across northern Tibetan plateau. Without a universally accepted, convincing dynamic explanation model accommodated the all of the facts seen in controlled seismic sections, but vertical thickening and northeastern shorten of the crust is quite evident and interpretable to a certain extent as the result of continent-continent collision. Simultaneously, weak geophysical signature of the BNS suggests that convergence has been accommodated perhaps partially through pure-shear thickening accompanied by removal of lower crustal material by lateral escape. Recent years the result of Moho with similar to 7 km offset and long extend in south-dip angle beneath the east Kunlun orogen and a grand thrust fault at the northern margin of Qilian orogen has attract more attention to action from the northern blocks. The broad lower-velocity area in the upper-middle crust of the Lhasa block was once considered as resulted from partially melted rocks. However the low normal vP/vS ratio and the Moho stepwise rise fail to support significant partial melting in the middle-lower crust of the central-northern Tibetan plateau. Furthermore, the lower-velocity of crust occasionally disappears, and/or local thinned exhibits their non-stationary spatial distribution.