Hydrodynamic mechanism for the Laramide orogeny

Abstract

The widespread presumption that the Farallon plate subducted along the base of North American lithosphere under most of the western United States and ∼1000 km inboard from the trench has dominated tectonic studies of this region, but a number of variations of this concept exist due to differences in interpretation of some aspects of this orogeny. We contend that five main characteristics are central to the Laramide orogeny and must be explained by any successful hypothesis: thick-skinned tectonism, shutdown and/or landward migration of arc magmatism, localized deep foreland subsidence, deformation landward of the relatively undeformed Colorado Plateau, and spatially limited syntectonic magmatism. We detail how the first two elements can be well explained by a broad flat slab, the others less so. We introduce an alternative hypothesis composed of five particular processes: (1) a more limited segment of shallowly subducting slab is created by viscous coupling between the slab and the Archean continental keel of the Wyoming craton, leaving some asthenosphere above most of the slab; (2) dynamic pressures from this coupling localize subsidence at the edge of the Archean Wyoming craton; (3) foreland shortening occurs after the subsidence of the region decreases gravitational potential energy, increasing deviatoric stresses in lithosphere beneath the basin with no change to boundary stresses near the subduction zone or changes to basal shear stress; (4) shear between the slab and overriding continent induces a secondary convective system aligned parallel to relative plate motion, producing the Colorado Mineral Belt above upwelling aligned along the convection cell; (5) the development of this convective system interrupts the flow of fresh asthenosphere into the arc region farther west, cutting off magmatism even in segments of the arc not over the shallowly dipping slab.