Collaborative Research: Geophysical Investigation of a Modern Continent-Continent Collisional Orogen: The SouthernAlps, New Zealand

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9725759 Jiracek On the South Island of New Zealand, convergence of the Pacific and Australian plates has given rise to a relatively narrow (~80 km wide) and less complex zone of active mountain building than in most other regions of the world. The dominant structural elements of the plate boundary are the Southern Alps where vertical movement and accompanying rates of erosion are among the highest in the world, and the Alpine Fault which has components of both strike- slip and dip-slip movement. The magnetotelluric work that willl be done under this project is part of a four year cooperative study of the South Island plate boundary involving U.S. and New Zealand scientists at USC, MIT, Woods Hole, UC Berkeley, Purdue, San Diego State, Utah, Institute for Geological and Nuclear Sciences (IGNS, NZ), Victoria University (NZ), and Otago (NZ). Support is being provided by both countries. The centerpiece of the project is a pair of multifaceted geophysical transects across the South Island including active source seismology, offshore multichannel and OBS data acquisition, passive seismology, petrophysics, magnetotellurics, gravity measurements, and surface geology. Experiments are aimed at delineating the crustal and upper mantle structure beneath the Southern Alps and adjacent regions. MT data collected so far has led to a high-quality magnetotelluric transect across the central South Island. The MT response of the interior of this orogen holds the exciting promise of understanding the thermal regime and rheology of the South Island at depth. The complete resistivity structure will provide essential bounds on crustal strain partitioning, metamorphism in the lower crust, relative deformation of the crust versus the mantle, compensation of the South Island uplift, and several other important processes. However, there presently exists a crucial gap in the MT coverage along the transect due to lack of land vehicle access across the principal region of upl ift through the Main Divide of the South Island. The data collected in this project will close this gap in coverage with six-eight new MT soundings supported by helicopter transport. Personnel from the IGNS will participate in this effort and will provide manpower and logistical support. ***