- journal_title：Geology
- Contributor：Honn Kao ; Rui Gao ; Ruey-Juin Rau ; Danian Shi ; Rong-Yuh Chen ; Ye Guan ; Francis T. Wu
- Publisher：Geological Society of America
- Date：2001-
- Format：text/html
- Language：en
- Identifier：10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0575:SIOTTB>2.0.CO;2
- journal_abbrev：Geology
- issn：0091-7613
- volume：29
- issue：7
- firstpage：575
A broadband seismic deployment in 1998–1999 in southwestern Tarim provided data for imaging the crust and upper mantle across the contact between the Tarim block and the Tibetan Plateau. A profile composed of migrated teleseismic receiver functions clearly shows lateral structural changes. The crust under the Tarim basin is relatively simple. The Moho discontinuity is mapped at a depth of 42 km near the northern end of the array and dips gently toward the south to ∼50 km under the Kunlun foreland. The Tarim basin appears to be rigid, with little shortening. Farther to the south, the imaging reveals a complex of reflectors in the lower crust and the upper mantle. There are both north- and south-dipping upper mantle structures under the Kunlun foreland and Kunlun Shan region. We found the observations to be more consistent with a model of lithospheric collision in which the crust and the upper mantle on both sides interpenetrate and deform.