Mapping the descent of Indian and Eurasian plates beneath the Tibetan Plateau from gravity anomalies

The collision of India with Asia has produced a complicated continental-continental plate boundary involving folding and faulting of variable trends and styles within and along the margins of the Tibetan Plateau. Numerous lines of evidence, including the development of two scales of folding in Tibet, suggest that the lowermost crust is behaving in a ductile fashion. This weak lower crust might then decouple the fundamental plate tectonic motions in the uppermost mantle from the complex pattern of surface faulting. In this study, we use Bouguer gravity anomalies to map out the geometry of Indian and Eurasian plate interactions in the mantle beneath the plateau based on both the inferred geometry of the Moho and lateral variations in lithospheric strength determined from mechanical modeling. In our preferred model, the lithosphere beneath Tibet consists of two distinct units: (1) the underthrust (to the north) Indian plate, which sutures with the Eurasian plate in the upper mantle below the Yarlung-Zangpo Suture or the Gangdese igneous belt, 200-400 km north of the Main Boundary Thrust, and (2) the underthrust (to the south) Eurasian plate. A subducting slab of Indian upper mantle extends about 200 km into the asthenosphere north from the mantle suture and exerts a bending moment of about 3.5x10(17) N on the Indian plate. Thus the mantle lithosphere appears to be behaving in the simple fashion of converging oceanic plates, while the more buoyant continental crust deforms under high gravitational potential in a complex pattern controlled by its lateral and vertical strength heterogeneity.