Heat flux and topography constraints on thermochemical structure below North China Craton regions and implications for evolution of cratonic lithosphere

Abstract

AbstractThe eastern North China Craton (NCC) has undergone extensive reactivation during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, while the western NCC has remained stable throughout its geological history. Geophysical and geochemical observations, including heat flux, surface topography, crustal and lithospheric thicknesses, and volcanism, show significant contrast between the eastern and western NCC. These observations provide constraints on thermochemical structure and reactivation process of the eastern NCC, thus helping understand the dynamic evolution of cratonic lithosphere. In this study, we determined the residual topography for the NCC region by removing crustal contribution to the topography. We found that the residual topography of the eastern NCC region is generally 0.3–0.9 km higher than the western NCC. We computed a large number of two‐dimension thermochemical convection models for gravitational instability of cratonic lithosphere and quantified surface heat flux and topography contrasts between stable and destabilized parts of cratonic lithosphere. These models consider different chemical buoyancy (i.e., buoyancy number B) and viscosity for the cratonic lithosphere. Our models suggest that to explain the difference in heat flux (25–30 mW/m2) and residual topography (0.3–0.9 km) between the eastern and western NCC regions, the buoyancy number B is required to be ~0.3–0.4. This range of B implies that as much as 50% of the original cratonic lithospheric material remains in the present‐day eastern NCC lithosphere and its underlying shallow mantle and that the new lithosphere in the eastern NCC may be a mixture of the relics of old craton materials and the normal mantle.