Seismic imaging of lithosphere structures of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) resides in a transition region from the Precambrian Canadian Shield to the Phanerozoic Cordillera. This broad foreland area has undergone more than three billion years of tectonic evolution from the Paleoproterozoic assembly of the Laurentian craton to the Mesozoic Cordilleran orogenesis along its western margin. This thesis presents updated geophysical imaging results of this tectonically diverse area based on more than a decade (2006-2017) of broadband recordings from dense seismic arrays in western Canada. This unique dataset enables a higher resolution illumination of the 3D seismic structures of the WCSB than previously available, which offers critical constraints on the morphology, composition and evolution history of the lithosphere of the western margin of the North American craton. The receiver function imaging reveals increased thickness and Vp/Vs ratio in the crust near the Snowbird Tectonic Zone and the Great Falls Tectonic Zone, two Precambrian discontinuities in the WCSB, which provide compelling evidence for Proterozoic collisions along these boundaries. The finite-frequency travel-time tomography provides high-resolution P- and S-wave velocity models reveals distinct high velocities beneath major Precambrian domains. The lithospheric root beneath the Hearne craton extends down to a minimum depth of 300 km, about 100 km thicker than the surrounding domains. The deep high-velocity root and substantially reduced crustal-shallow mantle velocities beneath the Hearne craton are consistent with earlier tectonic models of the Precambrian assembly. Through an integration of mantle velocity with surface heat flow, isostatic gravity anomaly and kimberlite spatial distribution, this thesis sheds new light on the formation and post-assembly modifications of western Laurentia. Finally, our model reveals a sharp Cordillera-Craton boundary (CCB), which is characterized by large (4.3%) P (7.0% for S) velocity and lithospheric thickness (>200 km) contrasts over a horizontal distance of ~100 km. The CCB dips steeply to the west beneath the southern Rocky Mountain Trench, contrary to a presumed landward-dipping Lithosphere-Asthenosphere boundary. We attribute the CCB to a preserved leading edge of the North American Craton established during its terminal collision with a microcontinent (Cordillera), which provides strong evidence for an upper mantle suture and favors a collisional origin of the southern Canadian Cordillera.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".