The Record of Collision and Accretion in the History of a Convergent Margin

Convergent margins become congested when they try to swallow buoyant, exotic crust or an oceanic swell associated with anomalously buoyant plume material. Mountain belts (orogens) that form at these convergent plate margins are the sites of significant lateral continental growth. Modern examples of accretionary margins are the North American Cordillera and southwest Pacific. The geologic record is riddled with accretionary orogens, such as the Tasmanides along the eastern margin of the supercontinent Gondwana and the Altaides that formed on the southern margin of Laurasia. In modern and ancient examples of long lived accretionary orogens, the overriding plate is subjected to episodes of crustal extension and back arc basin development, often related to subduction roll back and transient episodes of orogenesis and crustal shortening, coincident with accretion of exotic crust.

In previous work, (Mason et al, 2010), we found that buoyant material ingested by a subduction zone produces a relative advance of the local region of the trench (either reduced rollback or absolute advance) naturally leading to the characteristic indentation of the plate boundary by the plateau. Depending on the strength and buoyancy of the incoming anomaly relative to the oceanic lithosphere, it may be subducted or it may be accreted with the associated formation of a slab window. Extending this model to ocean-continent convergent zones (Moresi et al, 2014), we show how the indentation of buoyant exotic material also dominates terrane accretion.

When large blocks of material congest a subduction zone, the subduction zone needs to undergo signficiant re-arrangement for convergence to continue. We have modelled this process and observe characteristic patterns in the deformation of the over-riding plate, in the timing of the escape of material from behind the indenter, and in the oroclinal geometry that remains once the collision has completed.

References Mason, W. G., Moresi, L., Betts, P. G., & Miller, M. S. (2010). Three-dimensional numerical models of the influence of a buoyant oceanic plateau on subduction zones. Tectonophysics, 483(1-2), 71–79. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2009.08.021 Moresi, L., Betts, P. G., Miller, M. S., & Cayley, R. A. (2014). Dynamics of continental accretion. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature13033