Crustal Heating and Lithospheric Alteration and Erosion Associated With Asthenospheric Upwelling Beneath Southern New England (USA)

Abstract

The Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA), a region of exceptionally low seismic velocities in the asthenosphere beneath southern New England and easternmost New York State, has been interpreted as a site of mantle upwelling. We synthesize a combination of new and previously published data that indicates the following: (1) The upwelling has eroded or delaminated the lithosphere in a localized region centered in southern Vermont that we call the “Green Mountains Anomaly.” Forty-second period Rayleigh wave phase velocities, which have peak sensitivity at lithospheric depths, are slow in this region, and S wave receiver functions are dominated by shallow (60-km depth) mantle structures indicating reduced velocities. Thermal springs and sites with anomalously high concentrations of mantle-derived helium-3 are concentrated at the borders of the Green Mountains anomaly, perhaps due to stress concentrations produced by geologically recent, uncompensated delamination of the lower lithosphere. (2) S wave receiver functions indicate intense (>10%), shallow (60-km depth) short wavelength structures along the southern and western edges of the NAA, indicating that the lithosphere there is being intensely altered, possibly by a combination of shearing and introduction of volatiles. And (3) Notwithstanding the localized thinning and alteration, the NAA lithosphere as a whole does not appear to have experienced pervasive heating, for the compressional wave quality factor of QP = 870 inferred from the decay rate of Po waves is very significantly above the QP ≈ 60 value previously reported for the NAA asthenosphere.