Seismic evidence for stepwise thickening of the crust across the NE Tibetan plateau

We performed a receiver function analysis on teleseismic data recorded along two 550 km-long profiles crossing the northeastern Tibetan plateau. Results from time to depth migration, grid-search Vp/Vs determination and simulated annealing inversion of waveforms, reveal that the crust thickens from ∼50 km near the northern edge of the plateau to ∼80 km south of the Jinsha suture in the Qiang Tang block. Crustal thickening occurs in staircase fashion with steps located beneath the main, reactivated sutures. The Vp/Vs ratio, close to the global continental average does not suggest widespread partial melting but rather a more usual separation between an upper felsic and a lower mafic part within the northeastern Tibetan crust.