ALBERT

Description: True amplitude processing of the Urals Seismic Experiment and Integrated Studies (URSEIS) vibroseis deep reflection seismic data acquired by the URSEIS consortium shows the southern Uralide crust to be composed of four major blocks with distinctive reflection characteristics. These blocks are juxtaposed along crustal-scale boundaries. The foreland thrust and fold belt, developed from the East European craton crust, is imaged as subhorizontal to east dipping reflectivity that can be related to its Paleozoic and older tectonic history. The Moho beneath the foreland thrust and fold belt is not imaged in the vibroseis data set. The Main Uralian fault (the major arc-continent suture) is unreflective, but its subsurface location can be inferred by the truncation of the reflection pattern of the East European craton and its contrast with that of the Magnitogorsk arc. The Magnitogorsk arc reflectivity is characterized by patchy, noncoherent to coherent reflections in the upper ∼10 – 15 km that are interpreted to be related to the arc volcanic rocks. Below this, reflectivity is diffuse, or the arc crust is transparent, and the Moho is not imaged. The East Magnitogorsk fault zone, which juxtaposes the arc against the East Uralian zone, is not imaged by the data. The upper 5 to 6 km of the East Uralian zone, corresponding to the Dzhabyk granite, is transparent. Below the granite the crust is characterised by east dipping patches of moderately coherent, high-amplitude reflections that in the east become shallowly west-dipping. A ∼10 km thick, west dipping band of coherent, high amplitude reflections between 12 and 35 km depth, corresponding to the Kartaly Reflection Sequence, extends beneath almost the entire East Uralian zone. The crust beneath the easternmost East Uralian zone reaches 53 km in thickness. The upper and middle crust of the Trans-Uralian zone is characterized by a series of east and west dipping, concave upward, moderately coherent, high-amplitude reflections. The lowermost middle and lower crust displays thin bands of west dipping, coherent, low-amplitude reflectivity. The Moho is imaged as a sharp transition from reflective lower crust to transparent upper mantle at ∼49 km depth, and the lower crustal reflections appear to merge with it. The URSEIS vibroseis data are integrated with results from the explosion source reflection data, the wide-angle reflection data, and the surface geology to place constraints on the crustal architecture of the orogen and on the timing of its assemblage.