Seismic Evidence for a Mantle Transition Zone Origin of the Wudalianchi and Halaha Volcanoes in Northeast China

There exists much debate about origins of cretaceous-present volcanism in northeast (NE) China. Here we present high-resolution seismic images of the upper mantle beneath NE China by inverting P-wave travel-time data recorded by two dense linear arrays. The inclusion of the new data set has greatly improved sampling of the upper mantle beneath the study region, providing tight constraint on the seismic structure under the intraplate Wudalianchi and Halaha volcanoes. Local-scale low P-wave velocity (low-Vp) anomalies are revealed in the shallow mantle beneath the two volcanoes, whereas a large-scale high-Vp zone is imaged in the mantle transition zone (MTZ). These new results suggest that the two volcanoes, though located at different sites above the stagnant Pacific slab in the MTZ, are likely related to the deep subduction and dehydration of the Pacific slab, possibly through hot and wet upwellings in the big mantle wedge (BMW) beneath Wudalianchi and through deeper hydrous upwelling related to slab avalanche beneath Halaha. Our results also reveal other striking features, such as high-Vp structures resting atop the 410 km discontinuity beneath the Great Xing’an Range and the Songliao Basin, which are attributed to detached continental lithosphere. The delamination most likely occurred in the Cretaceous, which induced widespread magmatism in NE China.