Passive imaging of collisional orogens: a review of a decade of geophysical studies in the Pyrénées

Abstract

This contribution reviews the challenges of imaging collisional orogens, focusing on the example of the Pyrenean domain. Indeed, important progresses have been accomplished regarding our understanding of the architecture of this mountain range over the last decades, thanks to the development of innovative passive imaging techniques, relying on a more thorough exploitation of the information in seismic signals, as well as new seismic acquisitions. New tomographic images provide evidence for continental subduction of Iberian crust beneath the western and central Pyrénées, but not beneath the eastern Pyrénées. Relics of a Cretaceous hyper-extended and segmented rift are found within the North Pyrenean Zone, where the imaged crust is thinner (10–25 km). This zone of thinned crust coincides with a band of positive Bouguer anomalies that is absent in the Eastern Pyrénées. Overall, the new tomographic images provide further support to the idea that the Pyrénées result from the inversion of hyperextended segmented rift systems.