Abstract Using recently collected high‐resolution seismic data along a dense linear transect across Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia (called Mid‐Atlantic Geophysical Integrative Collaboration (MAGIC) profile), we analyze P‐to‐S receiver functions to investigate the undulations of the mantle transition zone (MTZ) discontinuities (410‐ and 660‐km) beneath the central Appalachian region. Our results incorporating the effects of local crustal and mantle structures suggest shallowing of both the 410‐ and the 660‐km discontinuities from the northwest (inland) to the southeast (coast) along MAGIC profile. Hydro‐thermal upwelling beneath the eastern U.S. coastal plain due to a hydrated MTZ and hot upwelling return flow associated with the descending lower mantle Farallon slab is consistent with our observations of MTZ structure considering 3D velocity heterogeneity. The inferred hydrous hot upwelling rising into the upper mantle may trigger dehydration melting atop the 410‐km discontinuity, which may help to explain the presence of a low velocity upper mantle anomaly beneath the region today.

The eastern margin of North America has undergone multiple episodes of orogenesis and rifting, yielding the surface geology and topography visible today. It is poorly known how the crust and mantle lithosphere have responded to these tectonic forces, and how geologic units preserved at the surface related to deeper structures. The eastern North American margin has undergone significant postrift evolution since the breakup of Pangea, as evidenced by the presence of young (Eocene) volcanic rocks in western Virginia and eastern West Virginia and by the apparently recent rejuvenation of Appalachian topography. The drivers of this postrift evolution, and the precise mechanisms through which relatively recent processes have modified the structure of the margin, remain poorly understood. The Mid-Atlantic Geophysical Integrative Collaboration (MAGIC) experiment, part of the EarthScope USArray Flexible Array, consisted of collocated, dense, linear arrays of broadband seismic and magnetotelluric (MT) stations (25-28 instruments of each type) across the central Appalachian Mountains, through the U.S. states of Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. The goals of the MAGIC deployment were to characterize the seismic and electrical conductivity structure of the crust and upper mantle beneath the central Appalachians using natural-source seismic and MT imaging methods. The MAGIC stations operated between 2013 and 2016, and the data are publicly available via the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Data Management Center.

This study presents observations of Love-to-Rayleigh scattering beneath the eastern North American passive margin that place new constraints on seismic anisotropy in the upper mantle. The scattering of Love-wave energy to Rayleigh waves is generated via sharp lateral gradients in anisotropic structure along the source-receiver path. The scattered phases, known as quasi-Love (QL) waves, exhibit amplitude behavior that depends on the strength of the anisotropic contrast as well as the geometrical relationship between the propagation azimuth and the anisotropic symmetry axis. Previous studies of seismic anisotropy in the upper mantle beneath eastern North America have revealed evidence for a mix of lithospheric and asthenospheric contributions, but the interpretation of indicators such as SKS splitting is hampered by a lack of vertical resolution. Complementary constraints on the depth distribution of anisotropy can be provided by surface waves, which have the additional advantage of sampling portions of the margin that lie offshore. Here we present measurements of QL phases using data from several hundred broadband seismic stations in eastern North America, including stations of the USArray Transportable Array, the Central and Eastern U.S. Network, and the MAGIC experiment in the central Appalachians. We find evidence for clear QL arrivals at stations in eastern North America, consistent with a region of particularly strong and coherent scattering inferred just offshore the central portion of the margin. The coherent scattering near the Eastern North American Margin likely reflects lateral transitions in seismic anisotropy in the asthenospheric mantle, associated with locally complex three-dimensional flow, with possible additional contributions from anisotropy in the mantle lithosphere. A second region of strong QL scattering near the southern coast of Greenland is enigmatic in origin, but may be due to pre-existing lithospheric fabric.

The ca. 1 Ga Grenville orogeny was a protracted mountain-building event that culminated in the collision of Laurentia and Amazonia and the formation of the Rodinia supercontinent. While the expression of Grenville orogenesis in present-day crustal structure has been extensively investigated in eastern Canada, evidence for contemporaneous crustal deformation is less well established beneath the eastern United States. Furthermore, the interpretation of a geophysical lineament through the U.S. midcontinent, typically inferred to be the Grenville deformation front, has recently been called into question; an alternative hypothesis is that this feature actually corresponds to an eastern arm of the Midcontinent Rift. Here we present P-to-S receiver functions computed for stations of the Mid-Atlantic Geophysical Integrative Collaboration (MAGIC) experiment, a dense array of broadband seismometers across the central Appalachians and midcontinent. We see evidence for a crustal negative velocity gradient that dips gently (dip angle <10 degrees) to the southeast and extends east from a location near the putative Grenville front, terminating near the Appalachian Mountains. While we cannot date this feature, its location and characteristics are consistent with a shallowly dipping, seismically anisotropic intracrustal shear zone associated with collisional deformation, perhaps during Grenville orogenesis. The similarity between this feature and similar mid-crustal detachments in other orogens, both ancient (Appalachians) and modern (Himalayas), suggests that this style of crustal deformation has been common in continental collisional orogens.

A joint analysis of magnetotelluric and Sp receiver function data, collected along a profile across the central Appalachians, highlights variations in regional lithospheric structure. While the interpretation of each data set by itself is non-unique, we identify three distinct features that are consistent with both the resistivity model and the receiver function image: 1) thin lithosphere beneath the Appalachian Mountains, 2) somewhat thicker lithosphere to the east of the mountains beneath the Coastal Plain, and 3) a lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary that deepens to the west of the mountains. In some regions, the correspondence between seismic velocity discontinuities and resistivity mark the base of the lithosphere, while in other locations we see seismic discontinuities that are contained within the lithosphere. At the western end of our profile a transition from highly resistive lithosphere to more conductive mantle represents the transition across the Grenville front. The thickness of lithosphere beneath the Grenville terrain is ∼140 km. Lithosphere at the eastern end of the profile has a thickness that is not well constrained by our coverage, but is at least 110 km thick. This lithosphere can be associated with a broader region of high resistivity material seen to extend further south. Directly beneath the Appalachian Mountains, lithospheric thickness is inferred to be as thin as ∼80 km, based on observations of elevated mantle conductivities and a westward-dipping seismic converter. Electrical conductivities in the uppermost asthenospheric mantle are sufficiently high (>0.1 S/m) to require the presence of a small volume of partial melt. The location of these elevated conductivities is close (offset ∼50 km to the west) to Eocene volcanic outcrops in and around Harrisonburg, VA. Our observations speak to mechanisms of intraplate volcanism where there is no divergent or convergent plate motion to trigger mantle upwelling or obvious fluid release, either of which can facilitate melting. Instead, we suggest that small scale mantle convection related either to pre-existing lithospheric thickness variations, or to lithospheric loss through delamination, coupled with relative plate motion with respect to the underlying asthenosphere, can trigger small amounts of melting. This melt migrates upslope, along the base of the lithosphere, potentially thermally eroding the lithosphere resulting in further thinning.

The passive margin of the eastern coast of the United States is known to be geologically active, with recently rejuvenated topography, intraplate seismicity, and volcanism of Eocene age. This study uses seismic data from the Mid-Atlantic Geophysical Integrative Collaboration (MAGIC) experiment to constrain lateral variations in the attenuation of teleseismic P waves beneath the central Appalachian Mountains to shed light on the structure and dynamics of the upper mantle at this "active" passive margin. We use a Monte Carlo approach to estimate variations in attenuation along with both data and model uncertainties. The quality factor of the upper mantle dramatically decreases over a distance of less than 50 km on the western side of the central Appalachian Mountains, where a low-velocity anomaly has been previously inferred. Extrinsic factors such as scattering or focusing are rejected as explanations for the observations on the basis of finite-difference waveform modeling experiments. The peak in attenuation beneath the crest of the Appalachian Mountains requires that near- to super-solidus conditions occur in the upper mantle and is co-located with volcanism of Eocene age. Our preferred interpretation is that the attenuation reflects the removal of the mantle lithosphere via delamination beneath the mountains, followed by ongoing small-scale convection. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The eastern margin of North America has been shaped by several cycles of supercontinent assembly. These past episodes of orogenesis and continental rifting have likely deformed the lithosphere, but the extent, style, and geometry of this deformation remain poorly known. Measurements of seismic anisotropy in the upper mantle can shed light on past lithospheric deformation, but may also reveal contributions from present-day mantle flow in the asthenosphere. Here we examine SKS waveforms and measure splitting of SKS phases recorded by the MAGIC experiment, a dense transect of seismic stations across the central Appalachians. Our measurements constrain small-scale lateral variations in azimuthal anisotropy and reveal distinct regions of upper mantle anisotropy. Stations within the present-day Appalachian Mountains exhibit fast splitting directions roughly parallel to the strike of the mountains and delay times of about 1.0 s. To the west, transverse component waveforms for individual events reveal lateral variability in anisotropic structure. Stations immediately to the east of the mountains exhibit complicated splitting patterns, more null SKS arrivals, and a distinct clockwise rotation of fast directions. The observed variability in splitting behavior argues for contributions from both the lithosphere and the asthenospheric mantle. We infer that the sharp lateral transition in splitting behavior at the eastern edge of the Appalachians is controlled by a change in anisotropy in the lithospheric mantle. We hypothesize that beneath the Appalachians, SKS splitting reflects lithospheric deformation associated with Appalachian orogenesis, while just to the east this anisotropic signature was modified by Mesozoic rifting.

The eastern margin of North America has been shaped by several cycles of supercontinent assembly. These past episodes of orogenesis and continental rifting have likely deformed the lithosphere, but the extent, style, and geometry of this deformation remain poorly known. Measurements of seismic anisotropy in the upper mantle can shed light on past lithospheric deformation, but may also reveal contributions from present-day mantle flow in the asthenosphere. Here we examine SKS waveforms and measure splitting of SKS phases recorded by the MAGIC experiment, a dense transect of seismic stations across the central Appalachians. Our measurements constrain small-scale lateral variations in azimuthal anisotropy and reveal distinct regions of upper mantle anisotropy. Stations within the present-day Appalachian Mountains exhibit fast splitting directions roughly parallel to the strike of the mountains and delay times of about 1.0 s. To the west, transverse component waveforms for individual events reveal lateral variability in anisotropic structure. Stations immediately to the east of the mountains exhibit complicated splitting patterns, more null SKS arrivals, and a distinct clockwise rotation of fast directions. The observed variability in splitting behavior argues for contributions from both the lithosphere and the asthenospheric mantle. We infer that the sharp lateral transition in splitting behavior at the eastern edge of the Appalachians is controlled by a change in anisotropy in the lithospheric mantle. We hypothesize that beneath the Appalachians, SKS splitting reflects lithospheric deformation associated with Appalachian orogenesis, while just to the east this anisotropic signature was modified by Mesozoic rifting.

This one-year effort, supported by the GeoPRISMS program for the East Africa focus, encompassed two different primary activities. The first activity included installation of eight new campaign GPS sites, four in southernmost Ethiopia and four in northwest Kenya. These sites span the presumed actively spreading region of the Turkana Depression and will, with a subsequent measurement, provide the first estimates of the rates and location of extension in the Turkana segment of the East African Rift. Capturing observations of spreading in Turkana is critical to understanding the African Rift at the largest scale, because the Turkana segment must serve as a kinematic link between the single, focused Main Ethiopian Rift and the parallel, simultaneously active Western and Gregory Rifts in Kenya. The Turkana segment may also play a critical role in distinguishing the importance of magmatism to the form and rate of continental extension, and in deciphering the temporal evolution of the Indian Ocean monsoon and its relationship to African seasonal air masses. The second activity included collection of a huge amount of geodetic data for all of East Africa and subsequent calculation of a community velocity model. Some of these data were readily accessible through the NSF-supported UNAVCO data archive, but other data were collected by over a dozen international scientific entities and in many cases were not publically accessible or readily usable. Negotiating use of the data and then estimating velocities (Fig. 1) for all sites with a common methodological approach and in a common standard reference frame transforms the study of East African present-day kinematics from a regional to a continental scale, facilitates systematic comparisons of different structural rift segments, and provides a synoptic framework for other active tectonics research in the region. This effort also identifies critical areas for future data acquisition, either through new data sharing agreements or new experimental deployments.

The transition zone between the modern northern and southern Appalachian Mountains is located in Pennsylvania, where the structural orientation of the fold-and-thrust belt changes from north–south to east–west, and the orogeny narrows significantly. Vintage studies of wide-angle reflection and temporary broadband seismic data suggest that the crust beneath the ∼8 km of foreland basin sequences was thickened and heavily intruded around the margins of and beneath a failed Neoproterozoic rift. We use receiver function analysis of broadband seismic data recorded by additional and permanent stations, along with forward and inverse modeling of Bouguer gravity data to constrain the geometry and depth extent of mafic intrusion and underplating in the rift, as well as the role of this Proterozoic heterogeneity on the location and geometry of the curvature of the Appalachian orogen. The receiver function analyses suggest that the crust is ∼47–49 km thick beneath the ancient rift, about 5–7 km thicker than the surrounding area. Inverse models of gravity data indicate that the ∼300 km-long zone of thickened, high density crust is bounded on both the NW and SE sides by steep contacts; its shorter NE and SW margins are also steep contacts interpreted as crustal-scale faults. Forward modeling of the gravity data, constrained by the receiver function crustal thickness estimates, sparse seismic reflection data and Euler deconvolution solutions, implies that the Proterozoic rift has been heavily intruded as well as thickened by a 7–10 km mafic underplate. Its margins appear to have been sheared along NE-striking fault zones that parallel Appalachian thrust sheet transport directions. These combined results suggest that the mid- and lower-crust of the Proterozoic rift was enriched with pyroxene, which strengthened the crust locally and localized compressional strain along its margins during the North American–African collision. Compressional strain in the pre-Appalachian crystalline crust to the southwest and northeast of the Proterozoic rift may have been more distributed, leading to the formation of oblique-slip faults orthogonal to the axes of folds, and leading to the curvature in the Pennsylvania salient. Additionally, the thrust sheets are stacked most thickly in front of the rift, suggesting that the rift served as a backstop during collision.

The origin of the Bermuda swell and volcanism remains enigmatic. The lack of an associated time‐progressive hotspot track and absence of present‐day volcanic activity make it difficult to reconcile with a deep mantle plume model. We analyze shear wave splitting measurements to estimate mantle flow direction and receiver function stacks to place constraints on the mantle transition zone thermal structure. *KS phases exhibit well‐resolved null arrivals (no splitting) beneath the swell over a range of back azimuths. We find that the 410 and 660 km discontinuities are 49 ± 5 km and 19 ± 5 km deeper than the global average, respectively, leading to a transition zone thickness that is 27 ± 4 km thinner than the average. Together, an apparently isotropic upper mantle and a thinned mantle transition zone suggest that mantle flow is primarily vertical beneath the swell, consistent with the presence of hot, buoyant mantle at depth.

We present observations of both null and non-null SKS splitting from temporary deployments across the southeastern United States in order to evaluate the relative contributions of lithospheric deformation and asthenospheric flow to regional anisotropy. Data for this study come from four temporary broadband seismic deployments: the Appalachian Seismic Transect (AST), the Test Experiment for Eastern North America (TEENA), the South Carolina Earth Physics Project (SCEPP), and the Florida to Edmonton Array (FLED). In general, we find fast directions aligned roughly parallel to absolute plate motion of the North American plate (APM) within and west of the Southern Appalachians, whereas to the southeast, we find a broad area dominated by complex splitting patterns consisting of well-constrained null splitting measurements over a range of backazimuths along with a very small number of resolved non-null measurements. This change in splitting patterns is consistent with a transition from drag induced asthenospheric flow beneath the older sections of the North American continent to vertical or incoherent mantle flow, likely in combination with complex lithospheric anisotropy, beneath the younger accreted terranes to the southeast. In addition to these general patterns, we find a number of non-null splitting measurements that are not aligned with APM, but are instead aligned with prominent magnetic anomalies that may correspond to ancient continental suture zones or faults. This would suggest that in these areas, a strongly anisotropic (but localized) lithospheric fabric dominates over any ambient asthenospheric anisotropic signature. In areas with generally strong APM parallel splitting, this would imply a thick sheared mantle lithosphere whose deformation-induced anisotropy is strong enough to overprint the anisotropy induced by APM, and is aligned with the shallower crustal structures responsible for generating the observed magnetic anomalies. In the southeastern areas dominated by null splitting measurements, there may be no strong signature from asthenospheric anisotropy to override, but a substantial lithospheric thickness is still required to generate the magnitude of the observed SKS splitting (∼1s). More data are required to verify these results, but future datasets including data from USArray may be able to exploit the correlations between null and non-null SKS splitting measurements and magnetic lineaments to better constrain the provenance of the regional anisotropic signature.

While the Cenozoic Afro-Arabian Rift System (AARS) has been the focus of numerous studies, it has long been questioned if low-velocity anomalies in the upper mantle beneath eastern Africa and western Arabia are connected, forming one large anomaly, and if any parts of the anomalous upper mantle structure extend into the lower mantle. To address these questions, we have developed a new image of P-wave velocity variations in the Afro-Arabian mantle using an adaptively parameterized tomography approach and an expanded dataset containing travel-times from earthquakes recorded on many new temporary and permanent seismic networks. Our model shows a laterally continuous, low-velocity region in the upper mantle beneath all of eastern Africa and western Arabia, extending to depths of ~500–700km, as well as a lower mantle anomaly beneath southern Africa that rises from the core-mantle boundary to at least ~1100km depth and possibly connects to the upper mantle anomaly across the transition zone. Geodynamic models which invoke one or more discrete plumes to explain the origin of the AARS are difficult to reconcile with the lateral and depth extent of the upper mantle low-velocity region, as are non-plume models invoking small-scale convection passively induced by lithospheric extension or by edge-flow around thick cratonic lithosphere. Instead, the low-velocity anomaly beneath the AARS can be explained by the African superplume model, where the anomalous upper mantle structure is a continuation of a large, thermo-chemical upwelling in the lower mantle beneath southern Africa. These findings provide further support for a geodynamic connection between processes in Earth's lower mantle and continental break-up within the AARS.

Orogeny in the geologically young northern Apennines is explained by the eastward retreat of a convergence zone in which Adriatic lithosphere subducts to the west. It is unclear, however, whether all of the lithosphere or only the lower portion has subducted since 15 Ma, when the convergence zone lay near Corsica. We combine teleseismic P and S wave arrival time data from the RETREAT seismic network (2003-2006) and surrounding permanent stations to estimate tomographic images of the upper mantle structure beneath the northern Apennines. We image a vertically oriented slab that that extends to only similar to 300 km depth. Our slab termination is shallower than previous studies but is confirmed by resolution tests. Furthermore, our images resolve the southern edge of the northern Apennines slab at similar to 43 degrees N, with no deep continuity with any slab segment to the south, as earlier proposed. Our results suggest that only a 300400 km strip of lithosphere has subducted since 15 Ma beneath the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, a length roughly equivalent to the distance from the present-day west coast of Corsica to the crest of the northern Apennines. Although not a definitive indicator, the largely aseismic vertical slab configuration and its limited extent, coupled with other volcanic and geophysical indicators, suggests the delamination scenario of Bird (1979), in which only the lower portion of the continental lithosphere subducts.