Anisotropic Zonation in the Lithosphere of Central North America: Influence of a Strong Cratonic Lithosphere on the Mid-Continent Rift
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We present shear-wave splitting analyses of SKS and SKKS waves recorded at sixteen Superior Province Rifting Earthscope Experiment (SPREE) seismic stations on the north shore of Lake Superior, as well as fifteen selected Earthscope Transportable Array instruments south of the lake. These instruments bracket the Mid-Continent Rift (MCR) and sample the Superior, Penokean, Yavapai and Mazatzal tectonic provinces. The data set can be explained by a single layer of anisotropic fabric, which we interpret to be dominated by a lithospheric contribution. The fast S polarization directions are consistently ENE-WSW, but the split time varies greatly across the study area, showing strong anisotropy (up to 1.48 s) in the western Superior, moderate anisotropy in the eastern Superior, and moderate to low anisotropy in the terranes south of Lake Superior. We locate two localized zones of very low split time (less than 0.6 s) adjacent to the MCR: one in the Nipigon Embayment, an MCR-related magmatic feature immediately north of Lake Superior, and the other adjacent to the eastern end of the lake, at the southern end of the Kapuskasing Structural Zone (KSZ). Both low-splitting zones are adjacent to sharp bends in the MCR axis. We interpret these two zones, along with a low-velocity linear feature imaged by a previous tomographic study beneath Minnesota and the Dakotas, as failed lithospheric branches of the MCR. Given that all three of these branches failed to propagate into the Superior Province lithosphere, we propose that the sharp bend of the MCR through Lake Superior is a consequence of the high mechanical strength of the Superior lithosphere ca. 1.1 Ga.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 teacher head, 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".