Long-wavelength undulations of the seismic Moho beneath the strongly stretched Western Anatolia

Hayrullah Karabulut (1) , Anne Paul (2) , Tugce Afacan Ergün (1) , Denis Hatzfeld (2) , Dean M Childs (1) , Mustafa Aktar (1)

1 KOERI - Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute
2 ISTerre - Institut des Sciences de la Terre

Western Turkey provides spectacular examples of the two end-member models of deformation of the continental lithosphere, with strain localization along the North Anatolian fault and distributed north–south extension along the Aegean coast. To provide constraints on the mechanisms of continental deformation, we present a new high-resolution image of lithospheric structure along a ∼650 km transect crossing Western Anatolia at 28°E longitude from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. More than 2600 receiver functions are computed from records of teleseismic earthquakes at 40 broadband seismic stations with an average spacing of 15 km. Lateral variations of crustal thickness and Vp/Vs ratio are inferred from both H-k and common conversion point stacks. We observe long-wavelength variations of Moho depth from ∼31 km in the Thrace basin to ∼25 km beneath the Marmara Sea, ∼32 km beneath the Izmir–Ankara suture, ∼25 km beneath the Menderes Massif and ∼20 km on the coast of the Mediterranean. No mid- or lower-crustal interface is visible in the migrated depth section and seismic discontinuities are confined to the shallow crust. The small-amplitude and long-wavelength lateral variations of the Moho topography suggest that viscous flow in a hot lower crust has smoothed out the lateral variations of crustal thickness induced by Cenozoic continent–continent collision. The crust–mantle boundary is flat beneath the central and southern Menderes Massif. The rougher Moho topography and more heterogeneous crust of the Marmara region likely result from transtension in the North Anatolian Fault Zone superimposed onto Aegean extension. The Moho of the subducted African lithosphere is observed dipping northward between ∼40 and ∼60 km depth at the southern end of the profile. The abrupt termination of the subducted slab only 50 km to the north of the Mediterranean coast confirms the slab tear inferred from previous tomographic studies.

Mots clés: Composition of the continental crust; Seismicity and tectonics

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]; Tectonique

Hayrullah Karabulut, Anne Paul, Tugce Afacan Ergün, Denis Hatzfeld, Dean M Childs, et al.. Long-wavelength undulations of the seismic Moho beneath the strongly stretched Western Anatolia. Geophysical Journal International, 2013, 194 (1), pp.450-464. ⟨10.1093/gji/ggt100⟩. ⟨hal-02156793⟩