Upper mantle tomography beneath the Pacific Northwest interior

Abstract

The Pacific Northwest has undergone extensive tectonic and magmatic construction in the Cenozoic, and many clues to its history are in a well-resolved upper mantle structure. We present new P, S, and VP/VS models that benefit from improved algorithms and additional data from recently deployed flexible array experiments in the region of the Columbia River Basalts, western Snake River Plain, and Idaho Batholith. We refine the geometries of previously imaged structures and identify new anomalies beneath the Pacific Northwest. A clear separation is resolved between the Wallowa and Idaho structures that extends from the base of the crust to the depth extent of these structures. The separation follows the Precambrian margin of North America, possibly indicating separate tectonic histories for the two structures. A shallow fast anomaly beneath Idaho Batholith may be responsible for the observed curvature of the Yellowstone track around this batholith. And a strong and unusually deep (180–250 km) slow anomaly is present east of the apparent Juan de Fuca slab gap. Resolving these structures well is important in understanding the origin of the lithospheric fragments in the mantle, and key to any reconstruction of the evolution of the Pacific Northwest-Farallon-Kula-Juan de Fuca tectonic system. Of most relevance, understanding the origin of the imaged high-velocity mantle structures provides strong constraint on their density, that otherwise would be largely unknown, which controls the evolution of vertical and horizontal stresses acting at the base of the lithosphere and hence the evolution of topography. Also, resolving the volumes of partially molten upper mantle shapes our understanding on the origin of the abundant volcanism in the Pacific Northwest interior.