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Crust-mantle and hinterland-foreland interactions in western Tibet-Pamir-Tian Shan or do mantle events govern big orogens?

The Pamir-Tian Shan-Hindu Kush orogenic segment at the western edge of the India-Asia collision stands high, reaches deep, transitions from flat to rugged, deforms truly 3D, and stretches wide beyond the direct continental collision zone. Based on data from a cornucopia of geoscience disciplines, we show that mantle driving forces and distinct geometrical and rheological boundary conditions govern the tectonic evolution, i.e., the mantle-crust-surface and hinterland-foreland interactions. We will take the subduction of marginal Indian lithosphere underneath the Hindu Kush and the indentation of the Indian cratonic mantle lithosphere into Asian (Tajik-Tarim) lithosphere since 10-13 Ma as an example for processes in the mantle. We show what effects they have on the deep Pamir crust, the Afghan-Tajik foreland basin, and the Tian Shan; those effects are lithospheric foundering below the Pamir, gravitational spreading of the Pamir-plateau lithosphere, Afghan-Tajik foreland-basin inversion, rise of the modern Tian Shan, and Fergana and Tarim block rotation. Our dataset integrates observations from seismology, petrology, petrochronology, thermochronology, and structural geology.

Details

Author
Lothar Ratschbacher1, Bernd Schurr2, Sofia-Katerina Kufner3, Bradley R. Hacker4, Florian Trilsch1
Institutionen
1TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany; 2GFZ Potsdam, Germany; 3Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany; 4UCSB, USA
Veranstaltung
GeoSaxonia 2024
Datum
2024
DOI
10.48380/x6d0-4f49
Geolocation
India-Asia collision zone