Magnetotelluric Soundings In the Canadian Rocky Mountains (original) (raw)
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Magnetotelluric soundings, structure, and fluids in the southern Canadian Cordillera
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 1992
The Cordillera of western Canada lies in a region of oceanic and island-arc lithosphere accreted to North America during subductions of the last 200 Ma. Magnetometer arrays have shown the crust of the region to be highly conductive. Magnetotelluric (MT) soundings across the Intermontane and Omineca tectonic belts between 50°N and 54"N reveal structure in terms of electrical resistivity. Pseudosections of phase and apparent resistivity and preliminary resistivity -depth sections are shown for three transects. The resistivity range is from less than one ohm metre to several thousands of ohm metres. In old continental shields, crustal resistivities cover a similar four-decade range transposed up two decades, i.e., 1O2-lo6 Q . m. We show that the observed resistivities can be produced by water with NaCl and (or) C 0 2 in solution, at the high temperatures of the Cordilleran crust, in fractured rock of effective porosity 4-5%. The resistivity variations may represent varying fracture densities. By following structures from outcrops we infer that the more resistive rocks are probably granitoid plutons, with low fracture densities. The highly conductive basalts probably have higher fracture densities. Sections and phase maps indicate that granitoid plutons continue from the Coast Plutonic Complex, under a thin layer of basalt, across the southwestern half of the Intermontane Belt. Near the centre of the Intermontane Belt, in line with the Fraser fault system, highly conductive rock continues from the surface at least to midcrustal depths. Resistivities as low as 1 Q . m in the uppermost crust under the Cariboo Mountains, in the Omineca Belt, are ascribed to intense fracturing or mineralization. For the southernmost transect, between 50°N and 51°N, a phase pseudosection shows informative resemblances to the sections farther north. Resistivity-depth inversions at seven sites from six-decade MT data give penetration into the upper mantle, but some of these sites may be affected by static shift. All results fit the mantle upflow hypothesis advanced earlier by Gough.
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2005
Using laboratory-derived temperature dependences of the electrical conductivity of mantle minerals coupled with appropriate mixing laws, we determine the bulk conductivity of mantle mineral assemblages for the ternary olivineorthopyroxene-clinopyroxene (Ol-Opx-Cpx) system. We calculate physical property bounds (Hashin-Shtrikman bounds) as a function of the fraction of different phases present; these limits correspond to the extreme situations where the most conducting phase is either fully interconnected or fully disconnected. The relationships we present between temperature, mineral composition and bulk electrical conductivity allow constraining one of them given the other two. We apply this approach to an area of the North American Cordilleran Intermontane Belt in the Yukon Territory, northern Canada, where xenolith evidence indicates bimodal upper mantle mineral assemblages (harzburgite and lherzolite). This locality coincides spatially with an upper mantle region of low electrical conductivity determined by long period magnetotelluric data. Given the mantle mineral composition and the maximum and minimum bounds on the electrical conductivity, deduced by non-linear model appraisal, we determine the permitted extremal temperature bounds of the Intermontane belt mantle rocks directly below the Moho to a depth of some 80 km. We show that the mantle in this region is at a minimum temperature of 820 8C and a maximum temperature of 1020 8C; the latter is some 200 8C colder than that suggested in a recent interpretation of an observed collocated low velocity zone from a teleseismic survey.
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2014
Long period (10-20,000 s) magnetotelluric (MT) data are being acquired across the continental USA on a quasi-regular grid of ∼70 km spacing as an electromagnetic component of the National Science Foundation EarthScope/USArray Program. These data are sensitive to fluids, melts, and other orogenic indicators, and thus provide a valuable complement to other components of EarthScope. We present and interpret results of 3-D MT data inversion from 325 sites acquired from 2006-2011 to provide a regional scale view of electrical resistivity from the middle crust to nearly the mantle transition zone, covering an area from NW Washington to NW Colorado. Beneath the active extensional subprovinces in the south-central region, on average we see a resistive upper crust, and then extensive areas of low resistivity in the lower crust and uppermost mantle. Further below, much of the upper half of the upper mantle appears moderately resistive, then subsequently the lower upper mantle becomes moderately conductive. This column suggests a dynamic process of moderately hydrated and fertile deeper upper mantle upwelling during extension, intersection of that material with the damp solidus causing dehydration and melting, and upward exodus of generated mafic melts to pond and exsolve saline fluids near Moho levels. Lithosphere here is very thin. To the east and northeast, thick sections of resistive lithosphere are imaged under the Wyoming and Medicine Hat Cratons. These are punctuated with numerous electrically conductive sutures presumably containing graphitic or sulfide-bearing metasediments deeply underthrust and emplaced during ancient collisions. Below Cascadia, the subducting Juan de Fuca and Gorda lithosphere appears highly resistive. Suspected oceanic lithosphere relicts in the central NW part of the model domain also are resistive, including the accreted "Siletzia" terrane beneath the Coast Ranges and Columbia Embayment, and the seismically fast "slab curtain" beneath eastern Idaho interpreted by others as stranded Farallon plate. Upwelling of deep fluid or melt in the Cascade volcanic arc region manifests as conductive features at several scales. These include quasi-horizontal conductive patches under the arc and fore-arc, likely denoting fluids evolved via breakdown of hydrous minerals in the current down-going slab. In the backarc, low resistivities concentrate in "plumes" connecting into a deeper aesthenospheric layer to the east, consistent with subduction-driven upwelling of hot, hydrated or melted, aesthenospheric mantle. Low resistivities (<10 m) deep beneath the stable cratons suggest higher levels of hydration there, and/or influence of poorly resolved structures outside the array. more localized lithospheric delamination and small-scale convection (e.g., . Many of these processes are ongoing such as subduction, arc magmatism, and back-arc extension in Cascadia,
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2014
New magnetotelluric soundings at 64 locations throughout the central Rae craton on mainland Nunavut constrain 2-D resistivity models of the crust and lithospheric mantle beneath three regional transects. Responses determined from colocated broadband and long-period magnetotelluric recording instruments enabled resistivity imaging to depths of > 300 km. Strike analysis and distortion decomposition on all data reveal a regional trend of 45-53°, but locally the geoelectric strike angle varies laterally and with depth. The 2-D models reveal a resistive upper crust to depths of 15-35 km that is underlain by a conductive layer that appears to be discontinuous at or near major mapped geological boundaries. Surface projections of the conductive layer coincide with areas of high grade, Archean metasedimentary rocks. Tectonic burial of these rocks and thickening of the crust occurred during the Paleoproterozoic Arrowsmith (2.3 Ga) and Trans-Hudson orogenies (1.85 Ga). Overall, the uppermost mantle of the Rae craton shows resistivity values that range from 3000 Ω m in the northeast (beneath Baffin Island and the Melville Peninsula) to~10,000 Ω m beneath the central Rae craton, to >50,000 Ω m in the south near the Hearne Domain. Near-vertical zones of reduced resistivity are identified within the uppermost mantle lithosphere that may be related to areas affected by mantle melt or metasomatism associated with emplacement of Hudsonian granites. A regional decrease in resistivities to values of~500 Ω m at depths of 180-220 km, increasing to 300 km near the southern margin of the Rae craton, is interpreted as the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary.
Revised 1-D mantle electrical conductivity structure beneath the north Pacific
Geophysical Journal International, 2010
The 1-D electrical conductivity model in the mid-mantle beneath the northern Pacific was revised in order to discuss the mean state of the mantle and to obtain a credible starting model for 3-D inversions. Semi-global geomagnetic depth sounding (GDS) responses obtained at 13 stations and submarine cable magnetotelluric (MT) responses for eight cables in a period range of 1.7-113 d were used to obtain the revised structure. It is well known that surface conductivity heterogeneity due to the ocean-land conductivity contrast has a large influence on the responses up to a period of 20 d. The effect of surface ocean-land distribution was removed by performing 3-D electromagnetic induction modelling including a surface conductivity heterogeneity distribution laid above a 1-D mantle structure. The corrected responses were averaged in the logarithmic space, and the resulting responses (quasi-1-D response) were inverted to obtain 1-D conductivity models. Correction of the surface heterogeneity effect requires a 1-D conductivity model, and the 1-D model must be similar to the resultant 1-D model for a consistent correction. We attained this by making iterations of the surface layer correction and 1-D inversion. Synthetic tests revealed that the iterative scheme could recover the supposed structure even for a 3-D heterogeneous mantle. Since electromagnetic sounding is not sensitive to the presence of a sharp discontinuity, we examined three different cases of conductivity variation with depth: (1) a model with no discontinuity, (2) a model with two jumps at 400 and 650 km depths and (3) a model with three jumps at 400, 500 and 650 km depths. The conductivity of the two-jump model in the transition zone is higher than the experimentally determined conductivity of dry wadsleyite and ringwoodite. If the difference is entirely due to the effect of water in the transition zone, then the conductivity is consistent with a water content in the region of 0.5 wt per cent. However, if an additional discontinuity of electrical conductivity is allowed at the 500 km depth, the obtained conductivity for the upper 100 km of the transition zone is lower, and can be explained by a less water content, 0.1 wt per cent, in wadsleyite.
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2004
1] Two goals of Lithoprobe's geoscientific studies in the Phanerozoic accretionary cordillera of western North America were to define the subsurface geometries of the terranes and to infer the physical conditions of the crust. These questions were addressed in Canada's southern cordillera a decade ago and have more recently been addressed in the northern cordillera, of which one component of the new studies is magnetotelluric (MT) profiling from ancestral North American rocks to the coast. We present a resistivity cross section, and its interpretation, of the northern cordillera derived from modeling data from 42 MT sites along a 470-km-long NE-SW profile. Beneath the Coast Belt (southwestern end of the profile) a deep crustal low-resistivity layer dips inland; we interpret the crustal part of this conductor as being due to metasedimentary rocks emplaced and metamorphosed during Paleocene Kula plate subduction. A strong lateral transition in lithospheric mantle resistivity exists below the Intermontane Belt that is spatially coincident with changes in chemical and isotopic characteristics of Tertiary to recent alkaline lavas, suggesting that isotopically enriched lithosphere related to the Coast Belt basalts extends partly beneath the Intermontane Belt. The unusually high lower crustal resistivity in the Intermontane and Omineca Belts, similar in value to the resistivity found in the unextended part of central British Columbia, excludes the presence of fluids or conducting metasediments. Finally, our resistivity model displays strong lateral variation of the middle and lower crust between different terranes within the same belt, as a result of the complex structural evolution of the lithosphere.
Geophysical Journal International, 2014
In this paper, we report the 3-D electrical conductivity distribution beneath the Australian continent in the depth range 410-1600 km, which we have imaged by inverting C-response estimates from a regional network of geomagnetic observatories. The inversion scheme is based on a quasi-Newton optimization method while the forward algorithm relies on an integral-equation approach. To properly account for the ocean effect in responses at coastal observatories we included a high-resolution (1 • × 1 • ) fixed thin laterally varying surface conductance layer. As starting model in the inversion we considered a laboratory-based 3-D conductivity model of the region obtained from seismic surface wave data and thermodynamic modelling. This model provides a good fit to observed C-response estimates supporting its choice as initial model. The most striking feature of the obtained 3-D model is a high-conductivity anomaly in the lower part of the mantle transition zone (MTZ; 520-660 km depth) beneath southeastern Australia implying considerable lateral as radial heterogeneity in the conductivity structure. The high-conductivity region appears to be 0.5-1 log units more conductive than previous global and other regionalized 1-D models. Further analysis using laboratory-based conductivity models combined with thermochemical phase equilibrium computations shows that the strong conductivity anomaly implies water contents of around 0.1 wt per cent in the upper part and >0.4 wt per cent in the lower part of the MTZ. This implies a large MTZ water reservoir that likely totals one to three times that which currently resides in the oceans. The amount of water in the lower MTZ appears to exceed the experimentally determined water storage capacity of the main lower MTZ mineral ringwoodite, which, as a result, undergoes dehydration-induced partial melting. Including contributions to conductivity from a thin melt layer (20 km thick) located in the mid-MTZ increases conductivity locally in the melt layer to ∼1Sm −1 , that is, about 0.5 log units more conductive than the average surrounding mantle. This provides an adequate explanation for the strong conductivity anomalies observed beneath part of the continent and points to lateral variations in melt in the MTZ.