Lithospheric magnetic structure of cratonic regions in Central-Eastern China inferred from aeromagnetic anomalies: Insights into magnetization in the uppermost mantle

Most of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle (SCLM) beneath Proterozoic cratons consists of refertilized Archaean SCLM. Variations in SCLM composition and its physical properties significantly affect the stabilization and preservation of the ancient continents. In this paper, aeromagnetic data are analyzed to reveal the magnetic structure of the lithospheric mantle beneath two major Precambrian blocks in central-eastern China, i.e., the Upper Yangtze Block (UYB) and Ordos Block (OB). After being reduced to the pole, the Fourier power spectrum of the aeromagnetic anomalies is calculated to determine the depth to magnetic sources. Considering the lower spatial resolution of the power spectral analysis in dealing with the long-wavelength aeromagnetic anomalies, we applied the scale-normalized continuous wavelet transform (CWT) on the magnetic data to trace the magnetic sources, with special focus on deeper ones. Synthetical model of a magnetic layer and application to the profile data validate the effectiveness of this scale normalization scheme in improving the wavenumber/spatial resolution in the CWT scalogram. In order to present a detailed magnetic structure, we carried out 2.5D forward modeling work on the magnetic data of a 2280 km-long nearly N-S profile across the UYB and OB. Due to the inherent ambiguity in the modeling results, the CWT-based spectral analysis is successfully adopted to provide source depth constraints for the initial model. The constrained forward modeling results indicate strong inhomogeneities among main tectonic blocks of studied area, like humans have different fingerprints. The magnetization of OB is larger than that of UYB since its Archean to Paleoproterozoic metamorphic basement are widely exposed at the surface, while the Precambrian basement of UYB is mostly overlain by unmetamorphosed Sinian cover and weakly metamorphosed Neoproterozoic strata. The most interesting aspect is that deep-seated magnetic sources might reside in the uppermost mantle of UYB and OB, suggesting vertical layering in the SCLM in cold cratonic regions.