Abstract
The Eastern European lithosphere is a natural laboratory to study continental formation and evolution through time, comprising Archean continental remnants, Proterozoic rifts and belts, and younger accreted terranes. We investigate the seismic structure of the East European Craton (EEC) crust and uppermost mantle, and the transition from Precambrian to Phanerozoic Europe across the Trans European Suture Zone (TESZ) using probabilistic transdimensional ambient noise tomography. We
cross-correlate noise recorded at broadband seismic stations from Eastern, Northern, and Central Europe, remove earthquake signals using continuous wavelet transform, and extract Rayleigh wave phase velocity dispersion curves. We invert these for the highest resolution shear wave velocity model of the Eastern European lithosphere to date, using Markov chain Monte Carlo Bayesian inversion. Our shear wave velocity model exhibits spatial correlation with major tectonic units and bears similarities with
active seismic survey profiles in terms of seismic velocity patterns and main discontinuities. The crust thickens across the TESZ boundary and the mantle is seismically faster than beneath younger terranes, consistent with a less dense Precambrian lithosphere in the EEC. The crust and lithosphere beneath
the Pannonian region is hyper-extended but the adjacent Transylvanian basin crust shows significant heterogeneity. The Precambrian building blocks of the EEC exhibit contrasting seismic fabrics. The Baltic orogens of Fennoscandia are underlain by uniform crust with a flat Moho, while Sarmatia shows alternating high and low velocity layers and a regional south-dipping crustal boundary from beneath the Ukrainian Shield towards the Crimean Peninsula. The last observation supports a geodynamic style driven by horizontal rather than vertical tectonics, with fundamental implications for the formation and evolution of early continents.
cross-correlate noise recorded at broadband seismic stations from Eastern, Northern, and Central Europe, remove earthquake signals using continuous wavelet transform, and extract Rayleigh wave phase velocity dispersion curves. We invert these for the highest resolution shear wave velocity model of the Eastern European lithosphere to date, using Markov chain Monte Carlo Bayesian inversion. Our shear wave velocity model exhibits spatial correlation with major tectonic units and bears similarities with
active seismic survey profiles in terms of seismic velocity patterns and main discontinuities. The crust thickens across the TESZ boundary and the mantle is seismically faster than beneath younger terranes, consistent with a less dense Precambrian lithosphere in the EEC. The crust and lithosphere beneath
the Pannonian region is hyper-extended but the adjacent Transylvanian basin crust shows significant heterogeneity. The Precambrian building blocks of the EEC exhibit contrasting seismic fabrics. The Baltic orogens of Fennoscandia are underlain by uniform crust with a flat Moho, while Sarmatia shows alternating high and low velocity layers and a regional south-dipping crustal boundary from beneath the Ukrainian Shield towards the Crimean Peninsula. The last observation supports a geodynamic style driven by horizontal rather than vertical tectonics, with fundamental implications for the formation and evolution of early continents.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 390-405 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Gondwana Research |
Volume | 125 |
Early online date | 23 Sept 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 23 Sept 2023 |
Bibliographical note
The present study was partially funded by the EENSANE (East European Ambient Seismic Noise) Project PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2020-2972 supported by UEFISCDI (Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding), Romania and the NUCLEU Program SOL4RISC, Project no PN23360201, supported by MCID (Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization). E.K. has received funding from the German ScienceFoundation (DFG, SPP-2017, Project KA 5371/1-1). Data from permanent stations used in this study were obtained from the Romanian National Seismic Network operated by NIEP, Main Centre for Special Monitoring of Ukraine, EIDA-ORFEUS, and IRIS seismological data archives. Most figures were made using GMT software (Wessel and Smith, 1998). We thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable input which improved the original manuscript.Keywords
- Seismic tomography
- Cratons
- TESZ
- Precambrian