Shape of the subducted Rivera and Cocos plates in southern Mexico: Seismic and tectonic implications

Abstract

The geometry of the subducted Rivera and Cocos plates beneath the North American plate in southern Mexico was determined based on the accurately located hypocenters of local and teleseismic earthquakes. The hypocenters of the teleseisms were relocated, and the focal depths of 21 events were constrained using a body wave inversion scheme. The suduction in southern Mexico may be approximated as a subhorizontal slab bounded at the edges by the steep subduction geometry of the Cocos plate beneath the Caribbean plate to the east and of the Rivera plate beneath North America to the west. The dip of the interplate contact geometry is constant to a depth of 30 km, and lateral changes in the dip of the subducted plate are only observed once it is decoupled from the overriding plate. On the basis of the seismicity, the focal mechanisms, and the geometry of the downgoing slab, southern Mexico may be segmented into four regions: (1) the Jalisco region to the west, where the Rivera plate subducts at a steep angle that resembles the geometry of the Cocos plate beneath the Caribbean plate in Central America; (2) the Michoacan region, where the dip angle of the Cocos plate decreases gradually toward the southeast, (3) the Guerrero‐Oaxaca region, bounded approximately by the onshore projection of the Orozco and O'Gorman fracture zones, where the subducted slab is almost subhorizontal and underplates the upper continental plate for about 250 km, and (4) the southern Oaxaca and Chiapas region, in southeastern Mexico, where the dip of the subduction gradually increases to a steeper subduction in Central America. These drastic changes in dip do not appear to take place on tear faults, suggesting that smooth contortions accommodate these changes in geometry. The inferred 80 and 100 km depth contours of the subducted slab lie beneath the southern front of the Trans‐Mexican Volcanic Belt, suggesting it is directly related to the subduction. Thus the observed nonparallelism with the Middle American Trench is apparently due to the changing geometry of the Rivera and Cocos plates beneath the North American plate in southern Mexico, and not to zones of weakness in the crust of the North American plate as some authors have suggested.