Seismic basement in Poland

Abstract

The area of contact between Precambrian and Phanerozoic Europe in Poland has complicated structure of sedimentary cover and basement. The thinnest sedimentary cover in the Mazury-Belarus anteclize is only 0.3–1 km thick, increases to 7–8 km along the East European Craton margin, and 9–12 km in the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ). The Variscan domain is characterized by a 1- to 2-km-thick sedimentary cover, while the Carpathians are characterized by very thick sediments, up to c. 20 km. The map of the basement depth is created by combining data from geological boreholes with a set of regional seismic refraction profiles. These maps do not provide data about the basement depth in the central part of the TESZ and in the Carpathians. Therefore, the data set is supplemented by 32 models from deep seismic sounding profiles and a map of a high-resistivity (low-conductivity) layer from magnetotelluric soundings, identified as a basement. All of these data provide knowledge about the basement depth and of P-wave seismic velocities of the crystalline and consolidated type of basement for the whole area of Poland. Finally, the differentiation of the basement depth and velocity is discussed with respect to geophysical fields and the tectonic division of the area.