Assessing thermo-mechanical properties of the lithospheric mantle in Asia

Asia is a key natural laboratory for the study of active intra-continental deformation in response to the ongoing far-field collision of India and Eurasia. The resulting tectonic processes strongly depend on the thermo-mechanical structure of the lithosphere. However, the problem of the thermo-mechanical properties of the lithospheric mantle is complex and still not well resolved. While seismic studies give an indication of the heterogeneity of the mantle lithosphere it alone is insufficient to attribute these anomalies to thermal differences, since compositional difference may have a significant effect on observed wave velocities. Using solely gravity field analysis one cannot distinguish between e.g. stacked density anomalies or lateral density anomalies. Combining both datasets allows for a better insight into the mantle lithosphere, though the solution to the problem at hand remains non-unique. This study, of which the preliminary results will be presented here, attempts to gain insight into both compositional and thermal aspects of the mantle lithosphere in Asia. By combining a recent high resolution tomographic inversion with gravity field data, but without the assumption of a steady state mantle, a trade off between compositional and thermal effects can be made. Furthermore, susceptibility of the resulting model to small changes in parameter space can be obtained thus creating a 'playing field' for possible solutions to the thermo-mechanical problem. This 'playing field' can be further constrained by additional data from other sources, such as xenolith studies.