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Crustal structure across the eastern North American margin from ambient noise tomography

Passive tectonic margins, like the eastern North American margin (ENAM), represent the meeting of oceanic and continental material where no active deformation is occurring. The recent ENAM Community Seismic Experiment provides an opportunity to examine the crustal structure across the ENAM owing to the simultaneous deployment of offshore and onshore seismic instrumentation. Using Rayleigh wave phase and group velocities derived from ambient noise data, we invert for shear velocity across the ENAM. We observe a region of transitional crustal thicknesses that connects the oceanic and continental crusts. Associated with the transitional crust is a localized positive gravitational anomaly. Farther east, the East Coast magnetic anomaly (ECMA) is located at the intersection of the transitional and oceanic crusts. We propose that underplating of dense magmatic material along the bottom of the transitional crust is responsible for the gravitational anomaly and that the ECMA demarks the location of initial oceanic crustal formation.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/625356
Date16 July 2017
CreatorsLynner, Colton, Porritt, Robert W.
ContributorsUniv Arizona, Dept Geosci, Department of Geosciences; University of Arizona; Tucson Arizona USA, Department of Geosciences; University of Arizona; Tucson Arizona USA
PublisherAMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
Rights©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
Relationhttp://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/2017GL073500

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