Seismic Study of Continental Orogenic Zones: The Rocky Mountains and the Midcontinent Rift

建议摘要EAR0107055(PH#17x)标题：大陆造山带的地震研究：落基山脉和大陆中部裂谷：堪萨斯州立大学的Stephen Gao，Kelly Liu大陆造山带的形成和演化是地球科学中最基本但知之甚少的问题之一。在各种类型的大陆造山带中，最普遍的两个是板块边界附近的造山带，如北美西部造山带，以及与大陆裂谷有关的造山带，如美国中部11亿年的中大陆裂谷(MCR)。这项拟议的研究旨在通过使用我们最近沿堪萨斯州东西向剖面记录的独特的宽带地震数据集来提高我们对大陆造山带形成和演化的理解。我们建议对落基山脉和大平原之间的地幔转换进行定位和刻画，并通过应用各种地震学技术来探索MCR之下的深部结构和可能的化石各向异性。我们还将进行地球动力学模拟，目的是通过将地震结果作为约束条件，寻找最能解释落基山脉自拉拉米德造山以来的隆升历史的模型。

Abstract for proposal EAR0107055 (PH #17x)Title: Seismic Study of Continental Orogenic Zones: The Rocky Mountains andthe Midcontinental RiftPI's: Stephen Gao, Kelly Liu, Kansas State UniversityThe formation and evolution of continental orogenic zones is one of the most fundamental yet poorly understood problems in geoscience. Among the various types of continental orogenic zones, the two that are most pervasive are those in the vicinity of a plate boundary such as the western North American orogenic zone, and those associated with continental rifting such as the 1.1 billion-year old Midcontinent rift (MCR) in the central United States. The proposed study is aimed at improving our understanding about the formation and evolution of continental orogenic zones by using a unique broadband seismic data set that we recently recorded along an E-W profile across Kansas. We propose to locate and characterize the mantle transition between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, and to explore the deep structure and possible fossil anisotropy beneath the MCR by apply various of seismological techniques to the broadband data set. We will also perform geodynamic modeling aiming at looking for a model that best explains the uplift history of the Rocky Mountains since the Laramide orogeny by using the seismic results as constraints.