THE COMPOSITIONAL AND THERMAL STRUCTURE OF THE LITHOSPHERE AND UPPER MANTLE BENEATH THE SUPERIOR CRATON: RESULTS FROM MULTI-OBSERVABLE PROBABILISTIC INVERSION

Eastern Canada is a geologically intriguing region comprising the world’s largest Archean craton, the Superior craton, surrounded by multiple Proterozoic orogenic belts, which has undergone modification due to hotspot passage, rifting, and magmatism. An understanding of the thermochemical structure of the lithosphere and sub-lithospheric upper mantle holds great potential in resolving a relationship between internal Earth dynamics, surface observables (e.g. topography), geophysical anomalies, and the location of mineral and energy resources. Here we present a thermochemical model of the Superior craton based on a multi-observable inversion method that utilizes a probabilistic (Bayesian) formalism using high-quality geophysical, geochemical, and geological datasets. This method offers a general framework that allows us to jointly invert multiple seismic data (e.g. surface wave, body wave) and non-seismic data (e.g. topography, heat flow, geoid anomalies). This will provide new insights on many aspects of the crustal structure and lithospheric architecture, and the thermal and compositional variations beneath the region. In this presentation, we will discuss the results from our model and several robust features that carry important geological and geodynamical implications for this region.