“…There are three coexisting end‐member models for the uplift mechanism of the northeast Tibetan Plateau, which is an area that includes the Qinling Orogen, and these are (1) outward growth of the highest part of the Tibetan Plateau by means of oblique subduction (Tapponnier et al, ), (2) eastward flow of the rheological middle and lower crust (Royden et al, ), and (3) changes in the balance between stress gradients and body force, which have resulted from removal of the lithosphere and have led to severe topographic relief (England & Houseman, ; Molnar et al, ). Support has been found for each of these models in recent years, with respect to results obtained from P wave tomography (Cheng et al, ; Wang et al, ; Wang, Wu, & Zhao, ), surface wave and ambient noise tomography (Bao et al, ; Yang et al, ; Zhang et al, ), active‐source seismic profiling (Zhang et al, ), teleseismic receiver functions (Wang et al, ), and magnetotelluric and gravity observations (Wang, Fang, & Hsu, ; Xiao et al, ). However, the uplift mechanism of the northeast Tibetan Plateau is still the subject of debate, and some researchers consider that the complex terrain in the northeast Tibetan Plateau is the result of processes that could be reflected by multiple models (Yuan et al, ).…”