The Zagros core: Deformation of the continental lithospheric mantle

Abstract

The Zagros of Iran form one of the youngest collisional orogenic belts on Earth. At shallow depths, shortening across the Zagros is accommodated by folding in the sediments, high‐angle thrust faulting in the basement and thickening of the lower crust, but how shortening is accommodated by the lithospheric mantle has been uncertain largely because the upper mantle seismic structure has been poorly known. We map the lateral variations in upper mantle shear wave speed beneath this region using a large, multimode surface wave data set. The upper mantle is slow for most of the Middle East, but a high shear wave speed lid extending to ∼225 km depth exists beneath the Zagros. We use aT(Vs, z) relation to convert the shear wave speed profiles to temperature profiles and fit these with geotherms to identify the base of the lithosphere. The upper mantle temperatures from the seismic model are consistent with temperatures derived from geochemical modeling. The lithosphere is less than ∼120 km thick over the region except for a thick lithospheric root beneath the Zagros, implying that shortening in the mantle is accommodated by lithospheric thickening. The composition of the volcanic rocks from above the area of the thickened lithosphere has depleted magma source regions with densities ∼60 kg m−3 less than the MORB source. Elsewhere in the Middle East the volcanic source regions have compositions and densities similar to that of MORB. The shortening across the Zagros is accommodated by lithospheric thickening but the cool thickened lithosphere has been stabilized from delamination by depletion.