Probing the southern African lithosphere with magnetotellurics, Part I, model construction

Abstract

The lithosphere of southern Africa is among the most important in the world for understanding continental evolution (e.g., Lee et al., 2011). It contains extensive, Archean to Paleoproterozoic cratons, including the Kaapvaal, Zimbabwe, and Congo Cratons, which are also sampled by voluminous kimberlite magmatism (e.g., Begg et al., 2009;De Wit et al., 1992). Investigations of the geological, geochemical, and geophysical nature of these cratons help us to understand the formation and amalgamation of the Archean continental lithosphere and the survival of that lithosphere to the present. The southern African lithosphere also hosts many of the world's largest mineral deposits (Clifford, 1966), including the world's largest platinum group element deposits in the Bushveld Complex (itself the world's largest layered mafic intrusion (e.g., VanTongeren, 2018)), extensive kimberlite-hosted diamond deposits including the Kimberley, Venetia, and Jwaneng deposits (e.g., Field et al., 2008), and giant orogenic and placer gold deposits such as those in the Barberton Goldfields and Witwatersrand Basin (e.g., de Ronde & de Wit, 1994). Since the formation of many of these deposits involved lithospheric-scale