Crustal structure beneath the Songpan——Garze orogenic belt

The Benzilan-Tangke deep seismic sounding profile in the western Sichuan region passes through the Song-pan-Garze orogenic belt with trend of NNE. Based on the travel times and the related amplitudes of phases in the record sections, the 2-D P-wave crustal structure was ascertained in this paper. The velocity structure has quite strong lateral variation along the profile. The crust is divided into 5 layers, where the first, second and third layer belong to the upper crust, the forth and fifth layer belong to the lower crust. The low velocity anomaly zone gener-ally exists in the central part of the upper crust on the profile, and it integrates into the overlying low velocity basement in the area to the north of Ma'erkang. The crustal structure in the section can be divided into 4 parts: in the south of Garze-Litang fault, between Garze-Litang fault and Xianshuihe fault, between Xianshuihe fault and Longriba fault and in the north of Longriba fault, which are basically coincided with the regional tectonics division. The crustal thickness decreases from southwest to northeast along the profile, that is, from 62 km in the region of the Jinshajiang River to 52 km in the region of the Yellow River. The Moho discontinuity does not obviously change across the Xianshuihe fault based on the PmP phase analysis. The crustal average velocity along the profile is lower, about 6.30 km/s. The Benzilan-Tangke profile reveals that the crust in the study area is orogenic. The Xianshuihe fault belt is located in the central part of the profile, and the velocity is positive anomaly on the upper crust, and negative anomaly on the lower crust and upper mantle. It is considered as a deep tectonic setting in favor of strong earthquake's accumulation and occurrence.

Tomographic imaging of P wave velocity structure beneath the region around Beijing

The three-dimension crustal and upper mantle structures in the region around Beijing were studied by seismic tomography. We used the P wave arrival times from local and teleseismic events. These events were recorded by 250 stations of the North China Seismic Array and 108 stations of the Beijing Telemetry Seismic Network. 118 869 P wave arrivals from 10 285 local events and 12 189 P wave arrivals from 107 teleseismic events were used in the inversion. We obtained the 3-D P wave velocity structure of the crust and upper mantle with the horizontal resolution of 0.3° in the studied region. The tomographic imaging shows the remarkably heterogeneous velocity variation. The velocity anomalies are in well agreement with the geological structure in the shallow crust. The different relationships between seismic activities and velocity anomalies may imply the different seismogenic structure and mechanism. Beneath the Moho under Taihangshan mountain and Yanshan mountain, we found the high velocity anomalies deep to 120 km and 200 km, respectively. The deep high velocity zone may be explained by the existence of the mountain root under Yanshan mountain. The high velocity anomalies in the upper mantle of North China basin may be the relics of the de-rooting from the former craton mantle lithosphere.