The lithospheric architecture of a Neoproterozoic collision zone in Southern Africa inferred from deep probing magnetotelluric data

Cratonic margins have played a major role in shaping the modern Southern African tectonic landscape, and central to our knowledge is information about the lithospheric-scale structures and geometries using geophysical methods. Understanding the evolution of the younger orogenic belts around Archean cratons using electrical resistivity data is one of the primary objectives of the Southern African Magnetotelluric Experiment (SAMTEX); the largest ever land-based magnetotelluric (MT) project. MT data were acquired along four profiles crossing the enigmatic Rehoboth Terrane, the Neo-Proterozoic Ghanzi-Chobe/Damara belts (collectively termed the Damara Mobile Belt, DMB) and the southern Angola craton. The extended Groom and Bailey distortion decomposition technique was applied to the MT data and analyses show significant depth and along-profile variations in geo-electric strike and dimensionality on all transects crossing these three tectonic units (i.e. Rehoboth Terrane, Angola craton and the DMB). Geo-electric strikes are generally parallel to the north-east trending tectonic fabric, as inferred from the magnetic data, but the significant strike variations with depth are expressions of heterogeneity in lithospheric structure. Electrical resistivity models derived from the data provide the first pseudo three-dimensional tectonic structure of the Damara orogen and adjacent terranes. Regional-scale resistivity models constructed from two-dimensional inversions of the MT data indicate significant variations in lithospheric resistivity structure along and across strike from the younger orogen to the older adjacent cratons. The Damara belt lithosphere, although generally more conductive and significantly thinner than adjacent Angola craton and Rehoboth terrane, exhibits upper resistive upper crustal features tentatively interpreted to be caused by igneous intrusions emplaced during Pan-African magmatic event. Upper crustal listric faults are imaged as conductive features and are interpolated and correlated on the surface with structures mapped with magnetic data. The southern margin of the Angola craton is inferred as a very resistive feature extending to depths of approximately 100 km; as such these results constrain the geographical position of craton boundary margin and its geometry at depth.