Die großen Gräben: Harmonische Strukturen in einer disharmonisch struierten Erdkruste |
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| Authors: | Prof Dr Henning Illies |
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| Institution: | 1. Geologisches Institut der Universit?t, Kaiserstra?e 12, 75 Karlsruhe
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| Abstract: | A system of intracontinental grabens extends over Western Europe, the Levant and East Africa. Small crustal segments framed by elevated shoulders are sunken along parallel escarpments and disintegrated by antithetic normal faults. The shoulders are risen up as outward tilted blocks and thought to form a closed vault at the base of the crust, corresponding to the wedge block of the graben. Underneath the Rhinegraben exists, as detected by seismic refraction measurements, a pillow-shaped body of material with P-wave velocities of 7.4 to 7.9 km/sec, intercalated between crust and mantle. The taphrogenesis of all larger grabens is assumed to be induced by the formation and growth of subcrustal swells of this type. Also the specific graben volcanism is thought to be connected with the intruded laccolithic body of mantle-derived material. The tensional breakup and the faulting of the warped crustal masses was favoured by the gravity slide of the crust which was uncoupled from the substratum by the intercalated magmatic layer. Along the Red Sea Rift the crust tore completely releasing the basaltic substratum in the inner graben. The pattern of its magnetic anomalies leads to the assumption that the pillow body is recruited by simatic dike injections according to the principle of sea-floor spreading. Therefore, there is a great conformity between the intercontinental and the mid-oceanic rift systems. The supplies of mantle material along the Mid-Atlantic and the Carlsberg Rift are related to the drift of the continental frames. The mid-oceanic rift systems in their medial position to the framing continental margins correspond to the intracontinental graben swarm, equidistant from both fronts of circum-Pacific tectonics. A reciprocating action is presumed between the ascending masses along the rift zones and the suction of masses along the deep-sea trenches and geosynclines. The observed crustal movements imply an equilibrant plastic flow within the upper mantle, probably impelled by mechanical convection currents. The continental unbalance between the Pacific and the anti-Pacific hemisphere is discussed as causing mantle currents. Within this interplay between crust and mantle and between continents and ocean floors, the oceanic crust had obtained harmonical features moulded directly by the deduced mobility. The continental crust, however, is passively stressed, its rocks are affected by heterogeneous deformations from which the continents got its polygenetic multiform fabric. |
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