Injection of Tibetan crust beneath the south Qaidam Basin: Evidence from INDEPTH IV wide-angle seismic data

The International Deep Profiling of Tibet and the Himalaya Phase IV (INDEPTH IV) active source seismic profile in northeast Tibet extends 270 km roughly north-south across the Songpan-Ganzi terrane, the predominantly strike-slip North Kunlun Fault (along the Kunlun suture), the East Kunlun Mountains, and the south Qaidam Basin. Refraction, reflection, and gravity modeling provide constraints on the velocity and density structure down to the Moho. The central Qaidam Basin resembles average continental crust, whereas the Songpan-Ganzi terrane and East Kunlun Mountains exhibit thickened, lower-velocity crust also characteristic of southern Tibet. The crustal thickness changes from 70 km beneath the Songpan-Ganzi terrane and East Kunlun Mountains to 50 km beneath the Qaidam Basin. This jump in crustal thickness is located similar to 100 km north of the North Kunlun Fault and similar to 45 km north of the southern Kunlun-Qaidam boundary, farther north than previously suggested, ruling out a Moho step caused by a crustal-penetrating North Kunlun Fault. The Qaidam Moho is underlain by crustal velocity material (6.8-7.1 km/s) for similar to 45 km near the crustal thickness transition. The southernmost 10 km of the Qaidam Moho are underlain by a 70 km reflector that continues to the south as the Tibetan Moho. The apparently overlapping crustal material may represent Songpan-Ganzi lower crust underthrusting or flowing northward beneath the Qaidam Basin Moho. Thus the high Tibetan Plateau may be thickening northward into south Qaidam as its weak, thickened lower crust is injected beneath stronger Qaidam crust.