The India-Eurasia collision is one of the most spectacular geological events in the world since the Cenozoic Era. It has formed the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the world's highest, largest, and latest continental collision orogen, and provides an excellent research window for understanding the characteristics and behavior of the continental lithosphere and enriching and developing Earth system science. In recent years, with the development of quantitative research on plateau tectonic deformation and paleo-elevation, the differential uplift process of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been clearly revealed. Compared with the original plateau that has been uplifted to its current height in the late Paleogene-Eocene, the adjacent Hoh Xil Basin and the Himalayas did not gradually uplift until after the Miocene. In order to explain the differential uplift process of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, predecessors have proposed many end-member models from different perspectives. This is not only a reflection of the inherent complexity of the dynamic mechanism of plateau uplift, but also due to the limitations of observation conditions, technical methods, etc., and the constraints on the deep structure of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are still incomplete.
The Hoh Xil Basin, adjacent to the northern edge of the original plateau, experienced rapid uplift in the Miocene and extensively developed post-collision magmatic activity in the Miocene-Quaternary, making it an ideal area for understanding the mechanism of differential uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. However, due to its location in the hinterland of uninhabited areas and poor field conditions, field seismic observations in this area are relatively scarce. Since 2008, the team led by He Rizheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, has carried out multiple phases of mobile seismic array observations on the northern Tibetan Plateau and accumulated data on multiple key profiles across the Hoh Xil Basin (Figure 1a). On this basis, Professor Li Wei of China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) collaborated with Researcher He Rizheng of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Researcher Yuan Xiaohui, Dr. Felix Schneider, Professor Frederik Tilmann of the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ), Associate Professor Guo Zhen and Professor Chen Yongshun of the Southern University of Science and Technology to reconstruct the three-dimensional S-wave velocity structure of the crust and upper mantle of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by integrating continuous waveform data recorded by mobile seismic arrays and national fixed seismic networks and using background noise imaging methods.
Technology provided by the Information Center of CIGEM
ADD: 20A Dahuisi Road, Haidian District Beijing 100081,P.R.China