Vestiges of underplating and assembly in the central North China Craton based on S-wave velocities

Abstract The destruction of the North China Craton (NCC) is a controversial topic among researchers. In particular, the crustal structure associated with the craton’s destruction remains unclear, even though a large number of seismic studies have been carried out in this area. To investigate the crustal structure and its dynamic implications, we perform noise tomography in the central part of the NCC. In this study, continuous vertical-component waveforms spanning one year from 112 broadband seismic stations are used to obtain the group velocity dispersion curves of Rayleigh waves at different periods, and surface wave tomography is employed to extract the Rayleigh wave group velocity distributions at 9–40 s. Finally, the S-wave velocity structure at depths of 0–60 km is determined by the inversion of pure-path dispersion data. The results show obvious differences in the crustal structure among the Western Block (WB), the Trans-North China Orogen (TNCO) and the Eastern Block (EB). The lower crust of the northern part of the EB exhibits a high-velocity S-wave anomaly, which may be related to magmatic underplating in the lower crust induced by an upwelling mantle plume. The S-wave velocity of the WB is lower than that of the TNCO in the upper and middle crust and is lower than that of both the TNCO and the EB in the lower crust. The crust of the TNCO shows higher S-wave velocities than the WB and EB in the upper and middle crust, and its overall S-wave velocity structure is clearly different from those of the WB and EB, implying that the crustal structure of the TNCO may contain vestiges of the Paleoproterozoic collision between the WB and EB and their subsequent assembly. This study marks the first time these findings are identified for the NCC