Publication Date:
2022-05-27
Description:
© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Zhang, M., Guo, Z., Xu, S., Barry, P. H., Sano, Y., Zhang, L., Halldorsson, S. A., Chen, A.-T., Cheng, Z., Liu, C.-Q., Li, S.-L., Lang, Y.-C., Zheng, G., Li, Z., Li, L., & Li, Y. Linking deeply-sourced volatile emissions to plateau growth dynamics in southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Nature Communications, 12(1), (2021): 4157, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24415-y.
Description:
The episodic growth of high-elevation orogenic plateaux is controlled by a series of geodynamic processes. However, determining the underlying mechanisms that drive plateau growth dynamics over geological history and constraining the depths at which growth originates, remains challenging. Here we present He-CO2-N2 systematics of hydrothermal fluids that reveal the existence of a lithospheric-scale fault system in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, whereby multi-stage plateau growth occurred in the geological past and continues to the present. He isotopes provide unambiguous evidence for the involvement of mantle-scale dynamics in lateral expansion and localized surface uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The excellent correlation between 3He/4He values and strain rates, along the strike of Indian indentation into Asia, suggests non-uniform distribution of stresses between the plateau boundary and interior, which modulate southeastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau within the context of India-Asia convergence. Our results demonstrate that deeply-sourced volatile geochemistry can be used to constrain deep dynamic processes involved in orogenic plateau growth.
Description:
This work was supported by China Seismic Experimental Site (CSES) (2019CSES0104), the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB26000000), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0607700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41930642, 41602341, 41772355, and 41702361), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) (2019QZKK0702), and the United Laboratory of High-Pressure Physics and Earthquake Science (2019HPPES02). P.H.B. was supported by the US National Science Foundation EAR Grant 1144559 during a portion of this work.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
