High‐resolution transition zone structures of the Gorda Slab beneath the western United States: Implication for deep water subduction

Abstract

The current data set from USArray provides an unprecedented opportunity to investigate mantle transition zone structures beneath the western United States. We have made transition zone images with the Common Converted Point (CCP) stacking method. More than 9600 high quality receiver functions were stacked with reference to two different three‐dimensional tomography models and a one‐dimensional velocity model. Where the Gorda plate passes through the transition zone, the 410 discontinuity has been elevated ∼25 km and the 660 discontinuity has been depressed ∼35 km. We interpret the transition zone topography in terms of mineral physics results in several different ways, noting in particular that recent measurements on the Clapeyron slope for the ringwoodite‐to‐perovskite phase transition under dry conditions give a phase boundary slope of ∼−1.3 to −0.4 MPa/K. The ∼35 km deflection of the 660 discontinuity observed in the receiver functions seems to be the evidence that the subducted slab can carry abundant water from the surface to the transition zone, and in the transition zone the water in the slab may be fully saturated (e.g. the water content is ∼2.0 wt%). Analyses of the velocity perturbations in the tomography models and the transition zone thickness indicate that the deep water is likely well confined within the subducted slab. We infer that the presence of water in the subducted Gorda slab might have contributed ∼15 km and the thermal anomaly in the slab might have contributed ∼20 km to the depression of the 660 discontinuity.