The Residue of Lithospheric Convergence in the Alpine-Pannonian-Carpathian system (original) (raw)

2009

Abstract

The continuing collision of the Adriatic block with European continental lithosphere has its clearest expression now in the Alpine collision zone. In the Early Miocene the collision zone extended further east and included probably all of the regions within the Carpathian Mountain Range. In the Mid-Miocene between about 17 and 12 Ma, however, the Pannonian lithosphere extended rapidly and subsequently subsided, while convergence persisted in the Alps and the Carpathian arc. The change from convergence to extension in the Pannonian domain is associated with either rapid subduction roll-back or gravitational instability in which the lower part of the lithosphere was removed and replaced by hot asthenosphere. Throughout this time however, convergence has continued in the Alpine orogeny further west. It is surprising therefore to see similarities in the mantle transition zone beneath these two neighbouring regions whose lithospheres have, in the last 17 Myr at least, evolved in such different modes. New seismic images from beneath the Pannonian Basin (Hetenyi et al., GRL, in press) and from beneath the Alps (Lombardi et al., EPSL, 2009) show that both regions have a depressed 660 km discontinuity beneath a relatively normal-depth 410 km discontinuity. An important factor in both regions evidently is that relatively dense material derived from the mid-Miocene collision sits stagnant on top of the 660 km discontinuity, where further descent is obstructed by the negative Clapeyron slope of the spinel-to-perovskite phase transition and the high viscosity of the lower mantle. While the depression of the 660 km discontinuity beneath the Alps is directly associated with ongoing convergence, that beneath the Pannonian appears to be decoupled from the upper mantle circulation that accompanied the Miocene Pannonian extension. If the cold material at the base of the Pannonian upper mantle is the residue of lithospheric subduction, delamination, or gravitational instability, the descending flow that produced it was probably detached from the present lithosphere when extension occurred. The apparent lack of a continuous path of fast material between the present Carpathian lithosphere and the cold material in the mantle transition zone might be interpreted as implying that extension of the Pannonian lithosphere was driven primarily by forces intrinsic to the lithosphere (e.g. buoyancy forces arising from crustal thickness variation or gravitational instability of the mantle lithosphere), and was not strongly coupled to an existing mantle circulation or to a retreating subduction zone.

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