Project Abstract
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We seek to develop a SCEC “Community Thermal Model” (CTM) to supply a standard reference point from which to make future refinements and corrections and provide a uniform starting point for construct- ing models that depend on temperature, thus removing the effects of differing starting assumptions. We constrain this model with observations of surface heat flow, bounds on thermal conductivity and radio- genic heat production in the crust and uppermost mantle and compute a series of 1D conductive geo- therms consistent with available data. With 2015 SCEC support we have made some preliminary calcu- lations of southern California steady-state geotherms using observational constraints on relevant control- ling parameters along the LARSE I seismic transect. The intersection of a geotherm with asthenosphere melting curves is then an estimate of lithospheric thickness and lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) temperature Ta. These depths are in rough agreement with the seismic receiver function results of Lekic et al. (2011) that show values of 70-75 km in imaged LAB depth along the LARSE I profile. Es- timates of Ta range from 1100 to 1500 ̊C. |