Abstract
The well-known N-S-trending fault in the Yangbajing area plays a crucial role in the tectonic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau. Previous researches on a few E-W geophysical profiles suggested that the eastern shear at the base of the upper crust and/or lithosphere deformation brought on by asthenosphere upwelling are the major causes of the Yadong-Gulu rift’s creation. Here we propose a 3-D electrical resistivity model derived from the magnetotelluric (MT) array data spanning the Yadong-Gulu rift (YGR), and the distribution of temperature and melt fraction is estimated by the experimental calibrated relationships bridging electrical conductivity and temperature/melt fraction. The result reveals that the Indian slab subducted steeply in the east of the Yadong-Gulu rift, while Indian slab may have delaminated with a flat subduction angle in the west. The temperature distribution shows that the upper mantle of the northern Lhasa terrane is hotter than that of the southern Lhasa terrane. This is likely the result of mantle upwelling caused by either the subduction of the Indian slab or thickened Tibetan lithosphere delamination. Moreover, the strength of the mid-lower crust is so low that it may meet the conditions of the local crust flow in the west-east direction. The local crustal flow and the pulling force from the upwelling asthenosphere jointly contributed to the formation of the Yadong-Gulu rift. These main factors exist in different stages of the evolution of the Yadong-Gulu rift.
1 Introduction
Since the collision of Indian and Eurasia about 50 Ma ago, at least 2,000 km of convergence has been accommodated by thickening the crust and elevating the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau (Yin and Harrison, 2000). How the high topography and the thickened crust of the Tibetan Plateau formed has been explained by several geodynamic models. They usually include the lateral eastern extrusion of continental lithosphere along several plateau bounding strike-slip faults (Tapponnier et al., 2001), a thin viscous sheet where the Tibetan Plateau undergoes distributed shortening and crustal thickening () and ductile flow in the middle-lower crust, that decouples deformation between the upper crust and mantle lithosphere ().
As the continent-continent collision, a variety of tectonically and seismically active faulting zones are formed in different regions of Tibetan Plateau, with NW-SE and NE-SW trending conjugate strike-slip faults in central Tibet and N-S normal faulting systems in southern Tibet (Pang et al., 2018), and these rifts always suggest generally east-west extension of the Tibet (Molnar and Tapponnier, 1978). However, the mechanism of these extensional structures is still unclear. According to previous studies, two main genetic models have been proposed. These include as follows: 1) model related to the gravity collapse after a maximum uplift and crustal thickening of the plateau or delamination of the lithospheric mantle (). 2) model related to the regional stress filed and boundary conditions, which consists of lateral extrusion model (Tapponnier et al., 1982), arc bending model (), radioactive spreading model (Murphy and Copeland, 2005), oblique convergence model (McCaffrey and Nabelek, 1998) and Pacific plate rotation model (Yin, 2000). The broad similarities in the history of volcanism, the age of rift initiation, and the trend and direction of extension of rifts in Tibet, Lake Baikal, and Shanxi were emphasized in the model of the Pacific plate rotation model (Yin, 2000). Furthermore, Yin (2000) proposed that as the Indian northward subducted, all of eastern Asian experienced mantle upwelling beginning at ∼40–35 Ma leading to thermal weakening of the lithosphere and eventual rift development at ∼8–4 Ma. The Ultrapotassic N-S trending dikes and adakitic intrusives usually accompany the W-E extension in southern Tibet implying a magma source in the lithosphere mantle that also triggered melting of an eclogitic lower crust (). Despite the insights provided by previous studies, the mechanism of the formation and evolution of the N-S trending faults in the southern Tibet is complex and controversial, and it may be not controlled by merely one factor.
As one of the most famous rifts in the southern Tibet, the formation of the Yadong-Gulu rift (YGR) has been studied by seismic studies (e.g., Zhang et al., 2013; Tian et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2019) and magnetotelluric study (e.g., Wang et al., 2017). Evidenced by the observation of shear wave splitting, Zhang et al. (2013) suggests that the onset of the N-S normal faulting does not indicate the gravitational collapse of the Tibetan lithosphere, and the shear rifting in the YGR is attributed to an eastern shear at the base of the upper crust. However, Tian et al. (2015) proposed that the continued extension of the YGR is mainly due to lithospheric deformation in response to asthenospheric upwelling and far-field W-E extensional stress. Wang et al. (2017) and Liu et al. (2019) indicate that the underthrusting of the Indian plate may cause slab tearing of the Indian slab and the upwelling of the asthenosphere, which could also drive E-W extension of the crust and contribute to the formation of the YGR in southern Tibet. However, these results are mainly reported by some E-W profiles in some specific regions. To better understand the evolution mechanism of the YGR, we did a 3-D magnetotelluric study by using MT array data from Sinoprobe, deployed in the Yangbajing region. Compared with the previous work of 3-D electrical profile across the YGR, this work covers a wider range near the Yadong-Gulu rift, which may provide us with a more comprehensive view of the electrical structure of this area. Also, more widely distributed electrical structure indicates the essential role of the mid-lower crustal conductors in the N-S rifting. In addition, the adding of the long-period MT data provides more reliable constraints for deep electrical structure.
The thermal state of the upper mantle of the lithosphere can help us understand 1) the origin and evolution of the lithosphere. 2) Lithospheric structure changes such as tectonic shortening, rifting, and mantle convection. 3) Relationship between shallow characteristics and deep dynamic processes. 4) Location of important mineral deposits and so on. The lithospheric thermal state is mainly acquired by four geophysical ways. We can use gravity data, surface heat flow data (SHF) and elevation to obtain a temperature model that can fit the observed data within the error range (e.g., ). However, this method ignores the influence of factors such as the compressibility coefficient, phase transformation of rocks, and heterogeneity of composition in the upper mantle, which may lead to some differences between the thermal structures obtained by other methods. Thermal state of the lithosphere can also be established based on seismic data (usually shear wave). This method is usually dependent on the empirical relationship between seismic wave velocity (usually shear wave) and petrological parameters (Priestley and McKenzie, 2006). Although this is a direct method to detect the mantle structure, the mantle structure information obtained from seismic data cannot clearly distinguish the influence of thermal structure and composition structure in the mantle and thus this method still has a certain degree of ambiguity (e.g. Schutt and Lesher, 2006). Since the electrical conductivity of solid aggregates is exponentially sensitive to temperature through an Arrhenius relationship, Magnetotellurics (MT) has the potential to provide constraints on the lithospheric thermal state. Recent studies have shown encouraging results towards linking conductivity, composition, water content, temperature and melt fraction (e.g. Sheng et al., 2020).
In this work, from the derived 3-D electrical structure, we estimated the lithospheric thermal structure. Thermal state in this region can help us have a knowledge of the strength of the lithosphere, so as to further understand the formation of YGR and the tectonic and magmatic activities.
2 Magnetotelluric data and analysis
2.1 Magnetotelluric data
The magnetotelluric (MT) data in this study are located in the longitude of 90°E to 93°E and the latitude of 29°N to 32°N (Figure 1), which are from the China Magnetotelluric Standard-Grid Network (SINOPROBE, Dong and Li, 2009) acquired by China University of Geosciences, Beijing (CUGB) from 2011 to 2013. There is a total of 119 MT data in the study area, including 107 broad-band MT data (BBMT) and 12 long-period MT data (LMT).
FIGURE 1
tHigh-quality broadband MT (BBMT) data were collected by Phoenix MTU-5 instruments over a period range of approximately .003–3,000 s and High-quality Long-period MT (LMT) data were collected by LVIV Lemi-417 long-period MT (LMT) instruments over an optimized period range of approximately 10–15,000 s. The incoherent noise was removed by synchronously recording the orthogonal electric field (E) and magnetic field (H) of different sites with GPS based on the geomagnetic coordinates (so called remote reference), and the data quality was improved. Robust statistic methods (LMT: ; BBMT; ) were used to analyze and process the MT time series files and estimate the frequency-dependent transfer function. The BBMT and LMT data were merged into single responses for each station. The apparent resistivity and phase curves of representative MT sites in the study area are shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, because of the extremely low environmental and human noise in Tibet, almost all of the MT data are of good quality.
FIGURE 2
2.2 Dimensional analysis
Before the MT data are used to employ inversion, it is needed to analyze whether the 2-D inversion or 3-D inversion is preferred for the MT data in the study area. Given that the phase tensor (PT) parameters can generally avoid the frequency—independent electric field galvanic distortion from heterogeneities () and need no prior dimensionality assumption, we use the phase tensor decomposition method to evaluate the dimensionality of the MT data. The equivalent geoelectrical strike direction of the MT data is indicated by the ellipse long axis, and the skew angle β denoted by the filled color of the ellipse can indicate the dimensionality at different periods (). It is generally indicated that the MT data show complex 3-D structures in the isotropric case when the absolute value of β (|β|-values) is more than 3° (). The more the absolute value β changes, the stronger three-dimensionality exhibits.
As illustrated in Figure 3, in the period of .01–0.1 s, the |β|-values are less than 3° and the ellipses are nearly circular, which indicates that the shallow structure exhibits the quasi-2D feature. In the period of 0.1 s, the |β|-values are less than 3° in the northern Lhasa terrane and near the IYS, which indicates generally 1-D or 2-D feature, but in the other areas, the |β|-values are more than 3° which shows the 3-D feature. The results of the phase tensor in the high-frequency period show that the shallow structure is pretty complex which may due to the fault and rift zone. The flatted ellipses with light color show that the consistent dimensionality pattern in deep structure and 3-D dimensionality become increasingly stronger with the increase of depth. Furthermore, the lithospheric-scale suture zones probably dominate the dimensionality in the deep structure. As suggested by the dimensionality above, the MT data in the survey necessarily call for a 3-D inversion and interpretation.
FIGURE 3
3 The 3-D inversion of the MT data
3.1 Details of the inversion and preferred model
Here, the ModEM inversion algorithm (; ), which utilizes the staggered-grid finite-difference approach to solve Maxwell’s equations and the non-linear conjugate gradient method to invert the MT data, is employed to invert the full impedance tensors (Z) in the study. A total of 32 frequency points in the range of .1–1,0000 s are used in the 3-D inversion. The initial model was a uniform half-space with resistivity of 100 . In the initial model, there are 107 cells in the N-S direction, 85 cells in the E-W direction, and 71 cells in the vertical direction (including seven air layers). In the vertical direction, the thickness of the first layer was 100 m and the space of mesh was increased by a factor 1.1. The horizontal grid had a pacing of 4 km (in both directions). In the 3-D inversion, we set error floors as |Zxx| 10% for the ZXX component, |Zyy| 10% for the ZYY component, |Zxy| 5% for the ZXY component, and |Zyx| 5% for the ZYX component. Note that 5% error in impedance is equivalent to approximately 10% in apparent resistivity and 2.86° in phase. The model covariance smoothing parameters of the X and Y directions are chosen to be .3 and the initial damping parameter lambda is 1,000. After 170 iterations, the normalized-root-mean-square (nR.M.S.) misfit was reduced from 16.8 to 1.77. The misfit was less than 3 for almost all of the sites (Figure 4), which indicates that the model responses fit well with the observed data.
FIGURE 4
Supplementary Figures S1, S2 are the comparations of the horizontal pseudo-slices of the observed data and 3-D inversion response at different periods. The apparent resistivity shows pretty good agreement between the observed data and 3-D inversion response at all periods while the phases of both are also consistent in the periods of less than 1,000 s. Meanwhile, several sites have minor difference in the impedance phase in the period of 1,000 s and 1,0000 s. It is further proved that the 3-D electrical resistivity model is reliable.
3.2 Inversion results
Our 3-D electrical resistivity model (see Figure 5) shows that a large-scale resistive layer with the uneven bottom interface is at depths of less than 20 km in the upper crust, which is separated by several small-scale, isolated conductors. Five conductors marked C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5 are distributed beneath the resistive layer in the Lhasa terrane, respectively. Furthermore, a resistor (R1) is located in the mid-lower crust of the TH terrane in the south of the IYS, the northern boundary of which is also uneven.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 7

Cross sections of the 3-D electrical resistivity model, approximately oriented South to North (line 90, line 91, line 92 marked in Figure 5). Inverted triangles: magnetotelluric measurement stations; Bold dashed black lines: possible locations of the main Himalayan thrust fault (MHT, Wei et al., 2001)
A series of sensitivity tests were carried out to verify whether the MT data has good constraints on these electrical anomalies. As a result, the 3-D electrical model is frozen with a block of 100 beneath a series of specified depths (e.g. 40, 60, 80 and 100 km; Supplementary Figures S3–S7). Compared with the responses of the original inversion model, conductors C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5 are well constrained by the MT data.
Our electrical structure also shows three channel-like conductive zones that link the main conductors in the middle-lower crust. The specific locations of these conductive zones are illustrated in the Supplementary Figures S8–S10 and they were marked as A, B, and C. In order to verify the existence of the three conductors, we conducted sensitivity tests of conductors A and B in the depth range of ca. 50–80 km, by replacing the resistivity of the corresponding space with 30 . And we also conducted a sensitivity test of conductor C in the depth range of ca. 60–80 km, by replacing the resistivity of the corresponding space with 20 . The comparations between the calculated responses of the sensitivity tests and the original responses indicate that conductors A, B and C may exist in their corresponding depths with a little lower conductivity (20–30 ) compared with the surrounding conductors.
In addition, Supplementary Figures S11A, B, C show the comparisons between the cross-section electrical structure of line 30 (this study) and the previous result of Wang et al. (2017). An obvious difference is whether a conductor with its bottom at a depth of approximately 77 km is in the east of the YGR. Note that the distribution of the MT data covering the conductive zones in the work of Wang et al. (2017) is denser than that in this study. In order to discuss what causes the difference between these two models, some sensitivity tests were carried out. Firstly, based on the scale of conductor C6 of the result of Wang et al. (2017), three groups of the modified models were established. In different depth ranges, we replaced the same area as C6 in our electrical resistivity model with the blocks with the resistivity of 3, 10, and 30 Ω·m respectively (Supplementary Figures S11–S13). Moreover, we also conducted another group of 3D inversion only with BBMT data (Supplementary Figures S14, S15). Generally, LMT data always has a relatively better constrains on the deep electrical structure. Compared with these three 3D inversion results and sensitivity tests, we found that involving of LMT data provides a better constrains on the bottom of the conductors and thus, there may not exist conductor C6 beneath the YGR in the depth range of 60–77 km or the C6 exists with a resistivity greater than 30 Ω·m. The difference in electrical structures between this work and Wang et al. (2017) may be due to the lack of LMT data which may provide more information about the deep earth. Furthermore, compared with the profile data, array data provide more information about the electrical structure of the study area and avoid the effect on the electrical resistivity profile from the conductors around.
Magnetotelluric studies often reveal anomalously high electrical conductivity in the mantle wedge above subducting plates (e.g., Worzewski et al., 2010; Pommier and Garnero, 2014;
Among the factors that may lead to the high conductivity anomalies in the mid-lower crust of the Tibet plateau, metallic minerals, such as iron and copper sulphide, and graphite films can be easily ruled out due to the limited spatial distribution and low stability at the geological time-scale (Yoshino and Noritake, 2011). Furthermore, the conductivities contributed by typical rocks, such as graphite, granulite, gabbro, quartzite and granite are much lower than the high-conductivity anomalies (Yang et al., 2012). Therefore, Aqueous fluids or crustal-derived and/or mantle derived melts, or combination of both are always used to explain the high-conductivity anomalies in the Tibet plateau, because the conductivity of the aqueous fluids and melts are high enough for the crustal high-conductivity anomalies. Even a small amount of fluid can cause an order of magnitude reduction in the bulk resistivity, and in the viscosity (e.g., Rosenberg and Handy, 2005), but corresponding changes in seismic velocity are small-and may go undetected (Watanabe, 2013).
Aqueous fluids in the crust and upper mantle of the subduction zones usually contain some dissolved salts, especially the Nacl (
The melts especially the partial dehydration melting of amphibolite and garnet amphibolite under lower crust conditions are also a potential candidate model for explaining seismic anisotropy and is also the origin of the low-velocity-high-conductivity zones (LV-HCZs) in the mid-lower crust of Tibet, especially for the following three reasons: The first is that amphibolite dominates the rock type in the region where LV-HCZs exist (
In our electrical resistivity model, conductors are located in the three different subterranes of the Lhasa terrane. Widely distributed shallow conductive layers (<5 km) in the Lhasa terrane may be considered to be a reflection of the geothermal activities. We notice that the relatively high-conductive structure in the western segment (west of 90°E) of the northern Lhasa subterrane is at depths of approximately 30–80 km with resistivity of 1–20 . The conductor marked C1 corresponds to a low Vs. velocity anomaly in the Vs. velocity model (
The widely distributed resistive cover identified in the shallow crust (∼10 km) might be the granite and multiple volcanic materials in the Lhasa terrane (Xu et al., 2006). The resistivity body in the Tethys-Himalaya terrane, such as R1 and R2 may represent the northern subducted Indian plate, which has been verified in the previous studies (Wei et al., 2001;
4 Thermal characteristic of lithospheric upper mantle and mid-lower crust
4.1 Thermal state of the lithospheric upper mantle
It is generally assumed minerals’ electrical conductivity is dependent on pressure, temperature, water content and composition, which can be described by the Arrhenius equation (Logan, 1982). Considering the different conduction modes in the minerals, the petrologically calibrated relationships between electrical conductivity and temperature of the main upper mantle minerals (55% Olivine, 28% orthopyroxene, 11% clinopyroxene and 6% garnet) (Peslier, 2010) (
It is worth noting that since MT data are better at constraining the conductance than in resolving the electrical conductivity (EC) with depth, we prefer to use bulk conductivity estimated by conductance and corresponding thickness rather than EC to estimate the thermal state of the upper mantle. Moreover, Water content, carbon dioxide content and pressure are very important for calculating the temperature and melt fraction of the lithospheric mantle (Peslier, 2010; Zhang et al., 2021). The maximum water content in the Tibetan plateau, according to Vozar et al. (2014) and Zhang (2017), was 200 ppm, but
FIGURE 8

(A,B) The density model (modified from
FIGURE 9

(A–H) Distribution of the temperature and melt fraction at depths of 70, 80, 90, and 100 km [ =0 ppm]. (A–H) Distribution of the temperature and melt fraction at depths of 70, 80, 90, and 100 km [ = 150 ppm].
The temperature model of the upper mantle shows that temperature increase slightly with the increasing depths and the maximum temperature of the lithospheric upper mantle can reach to ca. 1,142°C and 1,087°C with a condition of dry mantle and wet mantle respectively. However, the melt fraction of the upper mantle appears to decrease with the increasing depth and increasing temperature. The maximum melt fraction of the upper mantle can reach to 12.39% at 70 km when the mantle is dry, while the maximum melt fraction is only 1.90% at 70 km when the mantle water content is 150 ppm.
The thermal state difference between the west and east of the YGR is so obvious that we speculate that the differences in underground metamorphism, material migration, volcanic earthquake activity between the two regions are partially caused by the asymmetry thermal state and eventually form the unique surface features.
4.2 Temperature of the lithosphere
Thermal state of the lithosphere controls its mechanical and may affect the lithospheric dynamics. Based on the steady heat conduction equation, the data of heat flow and element abundance of U, Th, K in the Tibetan plateau are used to calculate the crustal temperature in/beneath the Tibet plateau (Wang and Huang, 1990;
FIGURE 10

(A) Lithospheric temperature in the north west of the YGR estimated by using average terrestrial heat flow of 95.5 . (B) Lithospheric temperature in the south east of the YGR estimated by using average terrestrial heat flow of 106 .
4.3 Moho temperature
The Moho discontinuity marks the boundary between the crust and the mantle and it plays a key role in mass transport. Constraining the depth and shape of the Moho beneath the Lhasa terrane may help elucidate the geometry of the subducting Indian plate beneath Lhasa Terrane (Shi D. et al., 2020). Moreover, the degree of coupling between upper and mid-lower crust and/or between the crust and lithospheric mantle is mainly controlled by the Moho temperature acting as a critical factor in influencing lithospheric rheology (Liao and Gerya, 2017). Here, by using the temperature calculation method same as the method mentioned in Section 4.1, the Moho temperature is estimated (Figure 11C). In this study, Moho depths refer to a compilation of receiver function (
FIGURE 11

(A) A curved section of the 3-D electrical resistivity model along the Moho (B) Moho depth from a compilation of receiver function (
4.4 The strength of the mid-lower crust
Archie’s law is considered to be a feasible method to estimate the melt fraction of the crust when the melt in the crust is interconnected in the previous studies (e.g.,
FIGURE 12

A map showing the distribution of conductance (A) Horizontal distribution of conductance at depths of 0–30 km. (B) Horizontal distribution of conductance at depths of 30–45 km. (C) Horizontal distribution of conductance at depths of 45–70 km.
FIGURE 13

The melt fraction in the mid-lower crust. (A) Horizontal distribution of melt fraction in the middle crust (∼30–45 km). (B) Horizontal distribution of melt fraction in the lower crust (∼45–70 km).
Previous studies have shown that melt conductivity can vary in a certain range. Some scholars argued that when the melt was assumed to be well interconnected, the pure melt resistivity was assumed to be .1–.3 in the southern Tibet (
In the middle crust, the partial melting mainly occurred in the northwest of the northern Lhasa terrane and southeast of the central with more than 6% melt fraction and southern Lhasa terrane with minimum melt fraction of 10%, which shows a pretty consistent with the hot springs in the study area. In contrast, the melt fraction in most areas of the lower crust exceeds 10%. The effective viscosity would be reduced by an order of magnitude, when the melt fraction was larger than 5% (Rosenberg and Handy, 2005; Unsworth et al., 2005). The distribution of the melt fraction in the mid-lower crust shows that the mid-lower crust in our study area is relatively weak with a maximum melt fraction of approximately 20 vol%. It is well known that melt may introduce a drop in wave velocity. Moreover, Liu et al. (2019) indicates that there is a subtle drop in S-wave velocity (>12%) in the mid-lower crust, which may be due to the weak mid-lower crust in this area. Our result sheds lights on that possible local crustal flow may exist in our study area, even though more evidences are needed to support our deductions.
5 Interpretation and discussion
5.1 Subduction of the indian plate
The northward dipping resistors R1 and R2 located in the mid-lower crust and upper mantle beneath the Tethys-Himalaya terrane, which is also shown as the resistive zones (Wei et al., 2001; Wei et al., 2009; Xie et al., 2016; 2017; Sheng et al., 2020) and high-velocity zones (
In our electrical resistivity model, the north-dipping resistor R1, with its northern boundary at approximately 29.5°N at depths of 30–80 km, is beyond IYS and does not extend to LMF in the west of the YGR. The resistor R2 in the mid-lower crust does not extend to IYS, which is consistent with the work of Sheng et al. (2020). No obvious resistive zones are between resistors R1 and R2. The resistive features mentioned above may indicate the different locations of the Indian lower crust (ILC) in different regions, which may result from the different onset locations of the Indian subduction because of the arched nature of the Himalayas and the IYS (Rosenbaum et al., 2008).
It is reported that the Indian lithospheric mantle may detach from the Indian crust and continue to move northwards (
Based on the discussion on the ENL, it is possible that ENL represents the remnant of ancient lithosphere of the Lhasa terrane (Zhu et al., 2011), which may play a key role in blocking the subduction of Indian slab, resulting in steep-angle subduction and short-distance advancement in the east of the YGR.
The continuous subduction of the Indian mantle beneath the Lhasa terrane caused the disturbance of the asthenosphere and upwelling of the hot materials to heat the mid-lower crust, resulting in the partial melting of the mid-lower crust (
FIGURE 14

3-D interpretative diagram of the current crustal and lithospheric mantle structure beneath YGR, showing the subduction mode of the Indian slab. MFT, Main Frontal Thrust; MBT, Main Boundary Thrust; MCT, Main Central Thrust; STDS, Southern Tibetan detachment system; JF, Jiali fault.
The uneven Moho surface (Figure 11B) corresponds well with the Hf mapping (
Localized Indian lithospheric mantle delamination into upwelling asthenoshperic mantle along 90°E can also well interpreted the distribution of the ratio anomalies (Figure 11B,;
In addition, phase transitions may occur during the injection of the Indian lithosphere. The base of the crust may be eclogitized with the low geotherm at the early stage of mountain building (Nabelek et al., 2009; Zhao et al., 2010), and the followed major extensional event with magma intrusion from asthenosphere may cause the increasing temperature, rocks re-equilibrating of the rocks within the granulite facies in the lower crust (Richardson and England, 1979).
5.2 Formation of the Yadong-Gulu rift
Yadong-Gulu rift (YGR) is one of the most important structures in our study area. The thermal state, geophysical features and even structures on both sides of the YGR show obvious asymmetry. The different depths of C1 (20–80 km) and C5 (20–60 km) are mainly due to the inherited structure of the Indian lithosphere, which leads to the upwelling of the asthenosphere at different depths in west-east direction. Meanwhile, tearing windows were formed as the tearing happened and asthenosphere upwelled through the tearing windows, heating and weakening the overlying crust and resulting in the mantle convection. It is worth noting that the conductive layers do not spatially match the surface rifts. We speculated that in the process of asthenosphere upwelling, mantle convection may provide east-west driving force on the Tibetan crust, which may cause the extension of the Tibetan and eventually formed the YGR. The formation mechanism is similar to the pattern in the Tian et al. (2015).
In addition, previous works have proposed that middle crust flow or lower crustal flow was pervasive in the Tibetan plateau (Nelson et al., 1996;
FIGURE 15

3-D view of the crust electrical structure of the study area. The maximum resistivity of this model is 26.5 between depths of 20 and 70 km. Tectonic processes are marked schematically. IL, Indian Lithosphere; YGR, Yadong-Gulu rift.
In addition, the temperatures on the both sides of the YGR are calculated in the Section 4.2, which shows that the lithospheric temperature is relatively higher in the west of the YGR than that in the east. As a result, connection C is not only a channel for material migration, but also a pathway for heat convection. Under the condition of bidirectional (N-S compression and E-W extension) lithospheric deformation, the widely distributed mid-lower crustal weak zones resulting from dehydrate melting or wet melting play a crucial role in the formation of the N-S trending rifts (Pang et al., 2018). Eastward crustal flow occurred due to the pressure difference in the west-east direction (
Both mantle convection and local crust flow lead to the west-east slip of the YGR supporting the focal mechanisms along YGR (Zhu and Helmberger, 1996;
Comparing with the previous viewpoint that the rift zones were just restricted to the upper crust (Masek et al., 1994; Nelson et al., 1996;
6 Conclusion
In this study, we have presented the results from a 3-D magnetotelluric study covering the Yadong-Gulu rift. Based on the electrical structure, the experimentally calibrated relationships bridging electrical conductivity and temperature/melt fraction were applied to construct the thermal and rheological structures of lithosphere.
On basis of the electrical structure, thermal structure as well as rheological structure, our study proposed the subduction model of the Indian slab which shows a steeper subduction angle in the east of the YGR and an Indian slab delamination in the west of the YGR. Moreover, subduction of the Indian slab may disturb the asthenosphere and trigger the mantle flow beneath the Lhasa terrane and the upwelling asthenosphere from the deep may widely melt the mid-lower crust of the corresponding area.
The estimated Moho temperature suggests that the decoupling between the brittle upper crust and ductile mid-lower crust is so strong that they may contribute to the formation of the YGR and BCF. Furthermore, the derived rheological feature shows that the mid-lower crust is so weak that it meets the rheological conditions to generate local crust flow from west to east under a pressure difference beneath the YGR. It is the local crustal flow that play an essential role in pulling the Indian and Tibetan crust and forming the YGR.
What’s more, the combination of the granulite lower crust beneath the Lhasa terrane, the fluids generated by dehydration of the Indian slab and the extremely high strain-rate for the special locations contributed to the occurrence of the intermediate-depth earthquakes along the Frontier of the delaminated Indian slab.
Statements
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.
Author contributions
LL: data curation, methodology, visualization, software, writing—original draft. SJ: writing—review and editing, project administration, funding acquisition. HD: writing—review and editing. WW: writing—review and editing. GY: writing—review and editing. LZ: writing—review and editing.
Funding
This study is funded by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0701), China Scholarship Council (202006400054) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC0600301).
Acknowledgments
We thank Gary Egbert and Anna Kelbert for providing their 3-D MT inversion code Modem. Special thanks must go to our field crews and students; this study would not have been possible without their efforts. We used the GMT software package (Wessel and Smith, 1998) for production of some figures.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2022.1089675/full#supplementary-material
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Summary
Keywords
Tibetan plateau, magnetotellurics, thermal state, lithospheric electrical structure, tectonic dynamics
Citation
Lei L, Jin S, Dong H, Wei W, Ye G and Zhang L (2023) 3-D electrical structure and tectonic dynamics in the Yangbajing area based on the array magnetotelluric data. Front. Earth Sci. 10:1089675. doi: 10.3389/feart.2022.1089675
Received
04 November 2022
Accepted
08 December 2022
Published
05 January 2023
Volume
10 - 2022
Edited by
Zhanwu Lu, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, China
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© 2023 Lei, Jin, Dong, Wei, Ye and Zhang.
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*Correspondence: Sheng Jin, 1993010830@cugb.edu.cn
† ORCID: Lulu Lei, orcid.org/0000-0001-8251-1936; Sheng Jin, orcid.org/0000-0001-6336-5785
This article was submitted to Solid Earth Geophysics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Earth Science
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