Crustal structure beneath southern Africa: insight into how tectonic events affect the Mohorovi i discontinuity

Abstract

The long and complex history of southern Africa makes it a geological nexus for understanding how crust forms, evolves and survives plate tectonic processes over billions of years. The goal of this study is to characterize the crustal thickness, composition, and Moho impedance contrasts across the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe Cratons and surrounding mobile belts, which range in age from Archean to Palaeozoic. We use data gathered from the 1997–1999 Southern Africa Seismic Experiment, the Africa Array (2006–2007) and the Global Seismographic Network (1993–2009) to generate P-wave receiver function Gaussian-weighted common conversion point stacks across the region in order to provide a continuous 3-D image of crustal variations throughout southern Africa.