Re-healing cratonic mantle lithosphere after the world's largest igneous intrusion: Constraints from peridotites erupted by the Premier kimberlite, South Africa

Zhang, Qiwei; Morel, M.L.A.; Liu, Jingao; Legros, Hélène; Luguet, Ambre; Viljoen, K.S.; Davies, G.R.; Pearson, D. Graham

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117838

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 53 publications

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“…In Australia, contractional strain in the intraplate Spriggs orogeny is attributed to elevated heat flow in the Adelaide Fold Belt (Dyksterhuis & Müller, 2008). Ancient cratons are riddled with lithosphere discontinuities (e.g., Schmitz et al., 2004; Snyder et al., 2017; Swain et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2022) which may have been potentially important features that aided lithosphere thickening.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Rheological Controls on Topography Development During Craton Stabilization: Objective Approaches to Comparing Geodynamic Models

Kublik,

Currie,

Pearson

2024

JGR Solid Earth

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Surface topography is an important yet largely neglected aspect of the early evolution of cratons. The lateral accretion of cratonic nuclei inevitably forms orogenic belts that subsequently provide a sediment source for large, resource‐rich intracratonic basins, but to date, geodynamic models have focused exclusively on lithospheric root processes. Here we use two‐dimensional thermal‐mechanical models to study the topography and lithospheric deformation during 50 Myr of compression of a cratonic nucleus, to simulate the lateral accretion phase of craton growth in the Neoarchean. Although the cratonic nucleus thickens slightly during the compression phase, most of the deformation occurs in the regions adjacent to the nucleus that have weaker lithosphere. Here, crustal thickness triples developing high topography in excess of 10 km without active erosion. Models with different initial rheological parameters will have different final topography and lithosphere geometry, but in general it is difficult to shorten and deform the depleted cratonic nucleus, unless there are significantly weak heterogeneities in the mantle lithosphere. We apply two quantitative analysis techniques to objectively evaluate a multitude of model outputs. Cross‐correlation clustering (CCC) measures the degree of similarity between topography profiles and categorizes models based on the general topographic character. Six different topography families are possible in the context of our models and crustal strength is the most important parameter affecting the shape. From principal component analysis (PCA) we identify four dominant lithosphere geometries. When used together, these two methods provide distinct yet complementary information about the surface and subsurface deformation features in our models.

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