Seismotectonics of the Himalayan Collision Zone: Geometry of the underthrusting Indian Plate beneath the Himalaya

Abstract

Fault plane solutions and well‐determined focal depths of medium‐sized earthquakes, topography, and Landsat imagery in conjunction with seismicity maps, cross sections, and available geological information are used to investigate the present tectonics of the Himalayan continental collision zone. Most of the accurately located epicenters of events along the Himalayan arc (78°E–95°E) that occurred between 1961 and 1981 are concentrated in a narrow zone, about 50 km wide, lying between the northerly dipping Main Boundary (MBT) and Main Central (MCT) thrusts. Most of these events are located just south of the MCT. Though the epicenters of the events are, in general, well located, their depths as determined by teleseismic travel time data are very unreliable. Events with accurately determined depths obtained from identification of surface‐reflected phases define a simple, planar zone from about 10‐km and 20‐km depth, with an apparent dip of about 15°. This result is all the more remarkable considering that the events used were located along about an 1800‐km length of the Himalyan arc. Except for one, all available focal mechanisms of events within this zone indicate shallow ( ≲30°), north dipping thrusts. This shallow, north dipping zone apparently defines a part of the detachment that separates the underthrusting Indian plate from the Lesser Himalayan crustal block. The spatial extent and the geometry of this interplate thrust zone strongly indicate that the MBT and nearby subsidiary surface and blind thrusts, rather than the MCT, are currently the most active structures of the Himalayan arc. We suggest that the great Himalayan earthquakes (M>8) occur along the same detachment surface as defined by the thrust‐type, medium‐sized events. Events located to the south of the MBT and beneath the Ganges foredeep show normal faulting with T axes perpendicular to the Himalayan trend. The above results suggest that the Indian continental plate is underthrusting the Himalayan crustal blocks in a relatively coherent and simple geometry and that this geometry is not much different from that observed along oceanic subduction zones. The November 19, 1980, earthquake that occurred near the MCT (near 88.5°E) shows a predominantly strike‐slip focal mechanism. One of the nodal planes of this mechanism is transverse to the Himalayan structural grain, and moreover, this plane has a trend similar to that of the recently mapped Yadong‐Gulu rift in the Tethyan Himalaya and in southern Tibet just northeast of the earthquake. We interpret this predominantly left‐lateral, strike‐slip mechanism to indicate a possible genetic relationship between transverse structural features in the Underthrusting Indian plate (the Kishangang basement fault) and the upper Himalayan blocks and Tibet.