On the Origin of One Basin-Multiple Mountain Couplings in the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Basin-Range Area in Eastern North China

摘要

The basin-range coupling relation is a leading subject of the modern geology. In geometry, relations of this type include couplings between stretched orogenic belt and down-faulted basin, compressional orogenic belt and foreland basin, strike-slip orogenic belt and strike-slip basin and so on. Fault chains are the key for these couplings and there are typical examples for all these cases. The North China down-faulted basin is coupled west with the Taihang uplift, east with the Jiao-Liao Mountains, north with the Yanshan orogenic belt and south with the Dabie orogenic belt, that is to say, the central down-faulted basin and the surrounding orogenic belts bear a coupling relation within a uniform dynamistic system. Study shows that the central down-faulted basin and the North China mantle sub-plume structure have a close relation during their formation. Owing to intensive mantle sub-plume uplifting, the bottom of the lithosphere suffered from resistance, which caused the lithosphere of the eastern North China to be heated, thinned and fault-depressed. Meanwhile, mantle rocks that were detached outwards in the shape of mushroom was dissected by surrounding ductile shearing zones, which lead to decompression and unloading to generate hypomagmas, and a series of mantle-branch structures were formed around the down-faulted basin. There is an obvious comparability among these mantle branch structures (orogenic belts), and they have basin-range coupling relations with the central down-faulted basins.