Thermal field and geothermal models of the lithosphere in the continent-ocean transition zone of northeastern Eurasia

Abstract

The region under study is located in the active “transition zone” from the Eurasian continent to the Pacific Ocean. The zone occupies not only the continent-ocean border area (continental coastline, marginal seas, island arcs, and deep-sea trenches) but also the margins of intracontinental regions of the Eurasian continent with different structures and regimes of development. The transition zone is a natural buffering and damping regulator of the interaction between the Eurasian and Pacific plates and is characterized by intense orogenesis, contemporary volcanism, active seismicity, diverse geothermal regime, and highly nonuniform measured heat-flow values. Available geothermal data for the region are not sufficiently generalized. After the latest maps compiled in the 1990s, new data have been obtained and new geoinformation technologies have been developed. In the study presented in this paper, available geothermal information has been generalized and a detailed heat flow distribution map has been compiled and used to calculate Moho temperatures, to determine the thickness of the “geothermal” lithosphere, and to construct distribution maps of these parameters.