Driving forces for ongoing northward indentation of India into Asia: insight from 3D numerical modeling of mantle dynamics

doi:10.7523/j.issn.2095-6134.2021.06.001

Abstract

Abstract: The collision between the Indian and Asian plates started about 60 Ma ago. It has continued to shorten the Asian side by at least 1 000 km, and thus formed the huge Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. One important lithospheric dynamical issue is what kind of force could overcome such huge resistance from the Asian plate and from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and drive the Indian plate continuously moving northward for such a long time. We performed 3D numerical modeling to reveal the role of mantle flow for the dynamics of the India-Asia collision by considering the global temperature structure converted from the seismic tomographic model S20RTS as initial temperature and the absolute plate motion velocities as initial surficial velocity boundary conditions. Our results suggest that drags from the moving asthenospheric mantle could be the main cause for transporting Indian plate northward.

Key words: India-Asia collision, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, asthenospheric flow, seismic tomography, numerical simulation

CLC Number:

P311.9

ZHENG Qunfan, SHI Yaolin. Driving forces for ongoing northward indentation of India into Asia: insight from 3D numerical modeling of mantle dynamics[J]. Journal of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2021, 38(6): 721-728.

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