Late Cenozoic Tectonic Uplift Producing Mountain Building in Comparison with Mantle Structure in the Alpine-Himalayan Belt

Abstract

Tectonic uplift producing recent mountain systems has spanned in the Alpine-Himalayan Belt the time interval from Oligocene to Recent (the last 30 - 35 Ma), being divided into two stages. During the first stage, local uplands, usually not higher than middle-elevated mountains, rose and their total area increased. During the second stage (the last 5 - 2 Ma) this process was accompanied by a total uplift of the greater part of the belt. As a result, the rate of vertical movements increased, the recent mountain systems were formed, and the coarse molasses accumulated in the adjacent basins. Uplift of the land surface resulting in formation of mountain topography is an isostatic reaction to decompaction of the upper spheres of the Solid Earth. Three factors of the decompaction are discussed in the paper. These are: I, collisional compression, resulting in deformational thickening of the Earth’s crust (folding, thrusting, etc.); II, partial replacing of the lithosphere mantle by the lower-dense asthenosphere material and, as a result, decompaction of the uppermost mantle; and III, retrograde metamorphism of high-metamorphosed rocks within the lower crust and near the crust-mantle boundary and, as a result, decompaction of these rocks. These processes were initiated or facilitated by the lateral asthenosphere flows.