Mapping the Traces of the Assembly and Multistage Breakup of Gondwanaland in the Lithosphere of Madagascar

Abstract:

Madagascar is an ideal place to study the multistage assembly and break up of Gondwanaland, the supercontinent whose breakup also gave rise to most of present day continental regions. At the end of the Proterozoic the assembly of Gondwanaland has placed the Malagasy basement between the Antarctic, Dharwar, Arabo-Nubian and Nubian-Tanzanian cratons. The continental collision processes accompanying the assembly left their mark on the Malagasy basement, currently exposed in the Eastern two thirds of the island, in the form of metamorphic and mineral belts as well as massive ductile shear zones. During the Jurassic Madagascar, India and Seychelles were breaking up from African. Long after the breakaway of India and the Seychelles from Madagascar (Cretaceous time), volcanic activation has occurred in several locations of Madagascar mostly in the central and northern part (Neogene period). The surface traces of assembly and breakup processes have been studied extensively using geological methods in Madagascar but the imprint on the deep structure has so far not been studied in much detail.

Between 2012 and 2014, 25 broadband stations were operated in the Southern Madagascar extending from East coast (Mananjary) to West coast (Toliary). The array crosses the Bongolava-Ranontsara shear zone, which is one of the major shear zones in Madagascar. In addition, between 2013 and 2014, 25 short period stations were deployed in the southeastern part of Madagascar. We will present preliminarily results of the lithosphere structure in the southern part of Madagascar based on surface wave dispersion analysis from both earthquakes and ambient noise combine with receiver function analysis. We will focus mostly on the contrast between the lithosphere structure in the eastern (Precambrian rocks) and the western (Sedimentary basins) parts of Madagascar.