Sedimentary and Crustal Structure of the Western United States From Joint Inversion of Multiple Passive Seismic Datasets

Abstract

The modern tectonic framework of the western US is dominated by a long-lived convergent margin, associated with the subduction of the Farallon plate beneath North America, and its transition, since the Miocene, to a transform boundary, made up of the San Andreas fault and its system of right-lateral strike-slip faults (Atwater, 1970;Atwater & Stock, 1998;Severinghaus & Atwater, 1990). Within this geologically complex framework, a few large and a number of small basins developed, covering much of California and Nevada in sediments. For example, the large Great Valley forearc basin in California was created coevally with the basements of the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada during the subduction (

Moho depth and tectonic implications of the western United States: insights from gravity data interpretation

“…These studies discovered specific tectonic provinces and terranes with significant Fig. 1 Position of the Cordilleran orogen of western North America along the Circum-Pacific orogenic belt (Dickinson, 2004) variations in crustal thickness and changes in seismic velocities across the Moho in areas from the west coast of North America to the High Plains (Hansen, and Dueker, 2009;Buehler and Shearer, 2010;Eagar et al, 2011;Levander and Miller, 2012;Lin et al, 2014;Li et al, 2022). Gilbert (2012) estimated the depth to Moho using the receiver function.…”