Abstract
The continental margins of the southwest subbasin in the South China Sea mark a unique transition from multi-stages magma-poor continental rifting to seafloor spreading. We used reflection and refraction profiles across the margins to investigate the rifting process of the crust. Combining with the other seismic profiles acquired earlier, we focused on the comparative geological interpretation from the result of multichannel seismic analysis and wide-angle seismic tomography. Our result provides the evidence of upper crustal layer with abundant fractures below the acoustic basement with a P-wave velocity from 4.0 to 5.5 km s−1. It indicates extensive deformation of the brittle crust during the continental rifting and can make a good explanation for the observed extension discrepancy in the rift margins of the South China Sea. The seismic chronostratigraphic result shows the possibility of the intra-continental extension center stayed focused for quite a long time in Eocene. Additionally, our evidence suggested that continental margin of the southwest subbasin had experienced at least three rifting stages and the existence of the rigid blocks is an appropriate explanation to the asymmetric rifting of the South China Sea.
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Acknowledgements
This work was made possible by the crews of R/V SHIYAN 2 of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and PI of this experiment, Dr. Xuelin Qui. We also want to give special thanks to Dr. Qingyu You for the development of the OBSs. Thanks to Dr. Barry C. Zelt for providing the seismic tracing package and Dr. James Hobro for providing the seismic tomography package. Most of the seismic processing work was performed with the Seismic Unix (SU) package of Jack Cohen and John Stockwell, and the figures in this manuscript were generated with the Generic Mapping Tool (GMT) of Paul Wessel and Walter Smith. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41404050, 41476033, 41576068, 41276049, U1505232, 91428204) and the National Program on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction (Grant GASI-GEOGE-01). The author was also supported by a fellowship of China Scholarship Council and Dr. Jian Lin while studying as a visiting graduate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA.
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Lü, C., Hao, T., Lin, J. et al. The role of rifting in the development of the continental margins of the southwest subbasin, South China Sea: Insights from an OBS experiment. Mar Geophys Res 38, 105–123 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-016-9295-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-016-9295-y