Constructing a Model of the Deep Appalachian Structure

The first deep imaging of the southern Appalachians has revealed a double Moho from the Blue Ridge Escarpment towards the North Carolina Piedmont, raising questions of what material is convoluting the crust-mantle boundary (Wagner et al. 2012). We’re presenting work that seeks to test if an eclogite root situated between 40 and 60km depth is permitted with the Bouguer gravity anomaly in this region. Results from this gravity modeling show that two profiles from Tennessee to North Carolina and from West Virginia to Virginia can include such a root, although small adjustments can be made to support a model without eclogite. We favor the eclogite models over the latter due to their ability to explain the seismic discontinuity found in Wagner et al. (2012) and the density anomaly found in Mooney and Kaban (2010).Bachelor of Scienc