Abstract
The lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary (LAB) is the seismic discontinuity with negative velocity contrasts in the upper mantle. Seismic detections on the LAB are of great significance in understanding the plate tectonics, mantle convection and lithospheric evolution. In this paper, we study the LAB in the Izu-Bonin subduction zone using four deep earthquakes recorded by the permanent and temporary seismic networks of the USArray. The LAB is clearly revealed with sP precursors (sdP) through the linear slant stacking. As illustrated by reflected points of the identified sdP phases, the depth of LAB beneath the Izu-Bonin Arc (IBA) is about 65 km with a range of 60–68 km. The identified sdP phases with opposite polarities relative to sP phases have the average relative amplitude of 0.21, which means a 3.7% velocity drop and implies partial melting in the asthenosphere. On the basis of the crustal age data, the lithosphere beneath the IBA is located at the ~ 1100 °C isotherm calculated with the GDH1 model. Compared to tectonically stable areas, such as the West Philippine Basin (WPB) and Parece Vela Basin (PVB) in the Philippine Sea, the lithosphere beneath the Izu-Bonin area shows the obvious lithospheric thinning. According to the geodynamic and petrological studies, the oceanic lithospheric thinning phenomenon can be attributed to the strong erosion of the small-scale convection in the mantle wedge enriched in volatiles and melts.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the IRIS DMC for supporting the seismic data. We gratefully thank Jeroen Ritsema for making the S-wave tomographic model (S40RTS) available to us and Masayuki Obayashi for kindly providing the P-wave tomographic model (GAP_P4). We also thank Xiaodong Song, Youlin Chen, Risheng Chu and Xuzhang Shen for their helpful suggestions on this study. The constructive comments from the editor Fabio Romanelli and two anonymous reviewers helped us to significantly improve the manuscript. This work is supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. XDB18010304), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 41474040 and 41704090) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant no. 119103S282). All figures in the paper are plotted with Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) (Wessel et al. 2013).
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Cui, Q., Wei, R., Zhou, Y. et al. Seismic Constraints on the Lithosphere–Asthenosphere Boundary Beneath the Izu-Bonin Area: Implications for the Oceanic Lithospheric Thinning. Pure Appl. Geophys. 175, 1983–1995 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1783-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1783-3