Sounding of electrical structure of the crust and upper mantle along the eastern border of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its tectonic significance

Abstract

Sounding and study on electrical structure of the crust and upper mantle within the eastern border region of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by using the magnetotelluric sounding (simply MT) method permitted us to understand the characteristics of specific electrical structure in the region. The sounding result clearly revealed that: (1) The Xianshuihe fault zone represents a large-scale lithospheric fault and is an important boundary fault of the rhombic Sichuan-Yunnan block. (2) The sounded region is a strong earthquake-prone zone. The different crustal media of blocks on both sides of the fault became an important deep background for the strong seismo-active zone. (3) A large-scale low-resistivity layer is found to exist at a depth more than ten kilometers beneath the northern part of the rhombic Sichuan-Yunnan block. Its electrical resistivity is only several to tens Ω · m. The layer northeastward extends down at an angle of 45°. It is related to an obstacle to the lateral squeeze of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and eastward flow of mass by the rigid block. It is inferred from the characteristics of electrical property of deep media that the northern part of the recent rhombic Sichuan-Yunnan block is in a thermal state and is one of the recently fairly active blocks. (4) The lithosphere in the sounded region is gradually thickened from the western segment (northern Sichuan-Yunnan block) to east (Yangtze block).