Initial constraints on crustal structure across the Suwanee Suture and South Georgia Basin from the SUGAR seismic refraction experiment

Some of the most important unresolved questions in plate tectonics concern the formation and rupture of continents. How does the accretion of terranes contribute to the construction of continental lithosphere, and what processes enable continental lithosphere to rupture? The South Georgia Basin was at the center of the most recent sequence of continental collision and rifting events to shape eastern North America. It is the largest of the failed Mesozoic rift basins that formed during the breakup of Pangea. It straddles the Suwannee Suture, the only well-defined remnant of the Alleghenian suture that joined North America and Gondwana, forming Pangea. The South Georgia Basin also lies at the center of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP).

Here we present initial results from the first phase of the SUwanee Suture and GA Rift basin (SUGAR) project, an active-source seismic refraction project to image the crustal structure across these features. During March 2014, we acquired data along a ~325-km-long, NW-SE oriented profile that crossed the Suwanne Suture and western part of South Georgia Basin, extending from north of Columbus, GA to northernmost Florida east of Jasper, FL. The profile was densely instrumented with single-channel RekTek 125A seismometers (“Texans”) spaced at ~250 m and deployed along state and country roads, yielding a total of 1193 seismometers along the profile. Thirty-three students and young scientists were involved in the deployment and recovery. The sources were 100 to 1800 lb shots spaced at ~20-50 km.

The data are of exceptionally high quality. On nearly all shots, we observe arrivals out to the largest shot-receiver offsets. Within the basin, refractions through the sedimentary section with apparent velocities of ~3-4 km/s are observed to maximum offsets of 7 km. Crustal refractions are observed at a wide-range of offsets with apparent velocities increasing from ~5.5 km/s to as high as ~7.25 km/s. At offsets greater than 150-180 km, first arrivals have apparent velocities > ~8 km/s, suggesting that they are turning waves through the uppermost mantle. Prominent reflections are also observed on most shotgathers. We will present initial velocity models of these data and discuss their implications for the tectonic configuration and history of this region.