The temperature of the western United States lithosphere and areas of likely mantle compositional variations

Estimates of lithospheric temperature are challenging, but essential given that the evolution, deformation, and dynamics of the U.S. lithosphere are fundamentally connected to temperature. To map out lithospheric geotherms, Pn velocities are mapped to temperature. These Pn-derived temperatures are coupled with newly revised estimates of heatflow and shallow subsurface temperatures to 'pin' lithospheric geotherms at the near-surface and just below the Moho. Making only very limited assumptions about the rather poorly known distribution of crustal heat producing elements, tight constraints can be placed on lithospheric geotherms in much of the western U.S. Where Pn velocities and surface heatflow mismatch, information can be gleaned about transient or horizontally-advective thermal processes, or compositionally modulated Pn velocity variations.. Lower crustal temperatures in the western U.S. are high (> 850C) in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the Rio Grande Rift, the southern margin of the Colorado Plateau, the eastern portion of the Nevada Basin and Range, the Oregon High Lava Plains, and the Yellowstone hotspot track. These locales are strongly correlated with <10Ma magmatism. In these places, temperatures are likely above the wet solidus and near the dry solidus for typical crustal compositions. This implies the lower crust has little strength, promoting crustal flow in response to gravitational potential energy variations, and decoupling the upper crust from the mantle lithosphere and asthenosphere. In deforming zones, elastic thicknesses predicted using a dry diorite/olivine rheology and estimated temperatures are higher than observed. Either lithology or hydration must be weakening the lithosphere relative to a dry diorite/olivine composition crust and mantle. To test the robustness of this observation, we predict the temperature at the Moho that would give the observed elastic thickness for various rheologies, and find in most cases this temperature is far higher than Pn observations will allow. This suggests that deforming blocks of the western U.S. lithosphere are particularly weak with respect to a dry rheology. Areas where heatflow and Pn temperatures are not consistent are also informative, and include: the western U.S. plate margin, the Colorado Rocky Mountain Front, the Wyoming Craton, and the North Dakota South Dakota border. Of these, the most notable is Wyoming, where Pn velocities are much higher than would be predicted by surface heatflow, and are too high to be caused by a peridotite lithology.