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Anisotropic uppermost mantle in young subducted slab underplating Central Mexico

Nature Geoscience volume 5, pages 55–59 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Knowledge of the rate of plate-spreading at mid-ocean ridges is critical for estimating plate motions1 and the outward flux of heat from Earth’s interior2,3,4. Magnetic lineations5 and anisotropy—crystals that have aligned themselves with mantle flow—preserved in oceanic lithosphere provide a means for estimating plate-spreading rates up to 180 million years ago. However, reconstructions beyond this time are difficult because most older oceanic lithosphere has been subducted into the mantle. Here we use converted seismic waveforms to show that anisotropy is preserved in the subducted part of the Cocos Plate beneath Central Mexico. We observe strong P- and S-wave anisotropy in the topmost 2–6 km of the subducted oceanic mantle. The strength of the anisotropy is comparable to that measured in the surface portion of the Cocos Plate6. We also show that P-wave azimuthal anisotropy and plate-spreading rate at present-day mid-ocean ridges exhibit a linear relationship. On the basis of this relationship, we suggest that the subducted portion of the Cocos Plate formed at a half-spreading rate of about 8 cm yr−1 at the East Pacific Rise, about 15 million years ago. Our results imply that subducted oceanic lithosphere could preserve an archive of ancient plate-spreading rates on Earth.

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Figure 1: Seismic probe of the subducted Cocos Plate beneath the Central Mexico subduction zone.
Figure 2: Observations and finite-difference modelling of local converted SP waves.
Figure 3: Stacked receiver function images and modelling.
Figure 4: P-wave azimuthal anisotropy versus half-spreading rates.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Data Management Center (IRIS-DMC) for making the data available. We thank A. Federiksen and M. Bostock for providing software for calculating receiver functions through dipping anisotropic layers, and H. Kawakatsu, P. Asimow and S. O’Reilly for the comments on lithospheric anisotropy, ophiolite assemblages and cratonic lithosphere formation during the early stage of this work. We acknowledge the MASE team for making the data available. We also thank D. Anderson and P. D. Asimow for help in reviewing an early draft of this paper. This study is supported by the Institute for Research on Earth Evolution (IFREE), Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and the Tectonic Observatory at Caltech.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interior for Research on Earth Evolution (IFREE), Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC), 3173-25 Showa-machi, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa 237-0005, Japan

    Teh-Ru Alex Song

  2. Division of Geological and Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

    YoungHee Kim

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T-R.A.S. initiated the project and carried out local waveform modelling. T-R.A.S. and Y.K. carried out receiver function analysis and modelling. T-R.A.S. and Y.K. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Teh-Ru Alex Song.

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Song, TR., Kim, Y. Anisotropic uppermost mantle in young subducted slab underplating Central Mexico. Nature Geosci 5, 55–59 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1342

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