Is magmatic underplating the cause of post-rift uplift and erosion within the Cabora Bassa Basin, Zambezi Rift, Zimbabwe?

Abstract

The Cabora Bassa Basin in northern Zimbabwe is an Upper Paleozoic karoo basin trending almost east-west. It has clearly recognisable gravity and magnetic signatures from which its dimensions are estimated to be approximately 150 km long and at least 62 km wide. Its southern boundary is marked by a north dipping, listric, master fault of possibly a ramp-flat-ramp geometry. Within the basin there is erosional truncation of over 2 km of sediment at the top of the stratigraphy and an absence of a post-rift thermal subsidence phase. Modern and major river channels are characteristically narrow, deep and without considerable amounts of silt on the river beds, whilst their valley sides are marked by multiple terraces. These ongoing erosional processes are evidence for sustained and possibly episodic uplift of the basin since the end of rifting in the Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary. An evaluation of possible uplift mechanisms for the basin and its surroundings lends support to lithospheric thickening as the most likely mechanism. Compression and magmatic underplating and/or intrusion are two common ways of thickening the lithosphere. The absence of major compressional structures within the basin suggests that magmatic underplating and intrusion may have played a major role in lithospheric thickening. Major element data for the mantle-derived Jerama basalts indicate substantial hidden cumulates, which possibly thickened the lithospheric column. Modelling of gravity data, constrained by both seismic reflection results, and the densities of the surface rocks, show that the crustal thickness beneath the basin is in the range 19–23 km. The stretching factors from seismic and gravity models range from 1.6 to 1.9. There is up to 5 km difference between the expected and modelled crustal thicknesses beneath the basin, which could be explained by magmatic underplating.