Permian plume beneath Tarim from receiver functions

Vinnik, Lev; Deng, Yangfan; Kosarev, Grigoriy; Oreshin, Sergey; Makeyeva, Larissa

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-9-1179-2018

Articles | Volume 9, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-9-1179-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-9-1179-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 5

Research article

|

22 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 22 Oct 2018

Permian plume beneath Tarim from receiver functions

Lev Vinnik, Yangfan Deng, Grigoriy Kosarev, Sergey Oreshin, and Larissa Makeyeva

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Oct 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 May 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Permian plume beneath Tarim from receiver functions by Vinnik, Deng, Kosarev, Oreshin, and Makeyeva.', Rob Porritt, 19 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Yangfan Deng, 15 Jul 2018
  - EC1: 'Comments regarding response to reviewer 1', Caroline Beghein, 15 Jul 2018
    - AC3: 'Response to editor comment 1', Yangfan Deng, 17 Jul 2018
      - EC3: 'Please, add to the discussion for completeness', Caroline Beghein, 18 Jul 2018
        
        AC5: 'Response to editor comment 3', Yangfan Deng, 18 Jul 2018
RC2: 'Review of Vinnik et al. "Permian plume beneath Tarim from receiver functions"', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Yangfan Deng, 15 Jul 2018
  - EC2: 'Comments regarding response to reviewer 2', Caroline Beghein, 15 Jul 2018
    - AC4: 'Response to editor comment 2', Yangfan Deng, 17 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Yangfan Deng on behalf of the Authors (15 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jul 2018) by Caroline Beghein

RR by Rob Porritt (02 Aug 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised version of this paper makes some improvements, but still has some significant weaknesses.

My primary concern is the possibility of move-out artifacts in the migration of the receiver functions. This is why I asked earlier about an event map to illustrate the azimuth and incidence distribution through the cells. Considering the distribution of stations is entirely to the northwest of the Tarim anomaly and that there is another anomaly (cell [a]) right in the center of the array, suggests move-out artifacts may be present. This concern is somewhat assuaged by the high amplitude of the anomalous cells, but I do worry the results may be skewed by these artifacts. This concern could be addressed by stacking geographic sub-arrays, such as one to the southeast, one to the northwest, one in the center, etc… and presenting in a multi-panel figure or single station stacking by ray-parameter and back-azimuth bins. I want to stress that I am not making this request because I doubt your algorithm, rather I am requesting this because I have run into similar issues with past experiences.

I still feel the exploration of alternative interpretations is not sufficient. The only lines I see addressing an alternative process-based interpretation is 136-138. This could be expanded by briefly discussing works that have suggested models of upper-mantle upwellings (e.g. James, Fouch, Carlson, and Roth, EPSL, 2011, Slab fragmentation, edge flow and the origin of the Yellowstone hotspot track; Tang Obayashi, Niu, Grand, Chen, Kawakatsu, Tanaka, Ning, and Ni, Nature Geoscience, 2014, Changbaishan volcanism in northeast china linked to subduction-induced mantle upwelling) which may result in a thinned MTZ in response to subduction processes. After setting up this alternative, you can then explain why this is not a likely interpretation due to the age of observed basalts and lack of evidence of subducting slabs in the region. The point is not to put forward unlikely interpretations, rather it is to show an exploration of alternatives and explain why those alternatives do not fit the data.

Line-by-line
Line 10: The term “most likely” is unnecessary
Line 21-22: “tens kilometers” should be “tens of kilometers”
Line 28-29: The transition from Siberian LIP to traps is not defined. This may confuse people not familiar with the terms. Simply adjust the prior sentence to something like: “Recently this test was applied to the Siberian traps Large Igneous Province (LIP).”
Line 38: “to IASP91” should be “to the IASP91” (see also line 51)
Line 52-53: “The depression can be explained by elevated temperature” should have a slight change, such as “Kraft et al., 2018 interpret this as due to elevated temperature”.
Line 62: “Asia is a likely far-field” should be “Asia is likely a far-field”
Line 73-74: “components in time domain” should be “components in the time domain”
Line 85-86: “CCP (Common Conversion Point)” should be “Common Conversion Point (CCP)”
Line 86-88: This sentence describing CCP stacking reads oddly. I’m not sure if it is technically grammatically incorrect, but I find myself tripping over reading it. I think a clearer sentence would be something like: “stacking. This process divides the Earth’s surface into cells and stacks, after an appropriate move-out correction, the PRF amplitudes which project into the same cell.”
Line 102: What metric was used to define “best quality”?
Line 111: I appreciate the labelling of boxes a, b, c as requested, but leaving them as lowercase letters blends into the regular text. Swap these out with capital A, B, and C to make them stand out more.
Line 116: “The further analysis (Kosareve et al., 2018)” should be “A broader in scope analysis by Kosarev et al., 2018,” (or similar as the meaning of “further analysis” is not clear).
Line 120 (and other places to consider): The term “likely” suggests some statistical framework with a probability greater than 50% that doesn’t seem possible in this context. For this line in particular, replacing likely with “may be” would remove that indication.
Line 123: “Possible…” should be “A possible…”
Line 126: “basalts with the areal” should be “basalts with an areal”
Line 132: “and the high zircon” should be “and high zircon”
Line 135: “with implication of” should be “and we infer”
Line 146: “for 1D” should be “for a 1D”
Line 146: “the well known” I think should be “a simple heat diffusion”
Line 153: Where does the seismic estimate of around 150˚C come from? I assume this is based on the depressed 410, but it could also be due to the velocity anomaly referenced earlier.
Line 154: “for 2D” should be “for a 2D”

Figure 2: I’m not sure what the string is on the top of the plot and the caption has a typo "600=700 km" rather than "600-700 km"

Referee Report: PDF

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RR by Jennifer Jenkins (27 Aug 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (31 Aug 2018) by Caroline Beghein

AR by Yangfan Deng on behalf of the Authors (20 Sep 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (01 Oct 2018) by Caroline Beghein

ED: Publish as is (04 Oct 2018) by Federico Rossetti (Executive editor)

AR by Yangfan Deng on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We used seismology data to estimate the thickness of the MTZ and found it thinned beneath Tarim, which is exactly beneath the Permian basalts. This relation can be reconciled with coherent translation of a tectosphere that extends to a depth of 410 km or more. Combined with observations in the Siberian large igneous province and Greenland, these features may confirm the existence of a deep tectosphere. Alternatively, the shift of Tarim is less than predicted by an order of magnitude.