Colloquium: Susan Beck

Susan L. Beck, Professor, Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona

Abstract:  The central South American convergent margin is the result of the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate and includes the Andes, one of the largest actively growing mountain ranges on Earth. The South American subduction zone has two regions of “flat” subduction in Peru and central Chile and Argentina separated by a segment of “normal” subduction and an active magmatic arc.  The central Andean plateau has an average elevation of 3-4 km and some of the thickest crust on Earth with deformation reaching ~800 km inland. This active margin is characterized by along-strike variations in magmatism, upper crustal shortening, crustal thickness, and slab geometry that make it an ideal region to study the relationship between the subducting slab, the mantle wedge, and the overriding plate. After 20 years of portable seismic deployments in the Central Andes seismologists have generated unprecedented seismic images spanning ~3000 km of the Andean lithosphere, the subducting Nazca slab, and the surrounding mantle. Seismic travel-time, ambient noise and earthquake surface-wave tomography, receiver function imaging, and joint receiver function - surface wave dispersion inversions have produced along strike images of the Central Andes from the surface to a depth of ~1000 km.  I will highlight images of along-strike variations in crustal properties and thickness, mantle lithospheric structure, and slab geometry.  These seismic images allow us to more completely evaluate the role of several tectonic processes in the formation and uplift of the Andes including: (1) overthickened continental crust driven by crustal shortening, (2) changes in slab dip and coupling with the overlying plate (3) localized lithospheric foundering, and (4) large-scale mantle and crustal melting leading to magmatic addition and/or crustal flow.