Whole-Mantle Tomography of Southeast Asia: New Insight Into Plumes and Slabs

We present detailed 3-D images of the whole mantle P wave velocity structure beneath Southeast Asia and surrounding regions. The results are obtained by applying an improved method of global seismic tomography to invert similar to 8 million P, pP, PP, PcP, and Pdiff arrival times from 23,587 earthquakes recorded at 14,136 stations distributed all over the world. Our tomographic model reveals a continuous, thin low-velocity (low-V) zone from the surface to the core-mantle boundary beneath the Hainan hotspot, which may reflect the Hainan plume that exists in the whole mantle. Beneath the Australian slab that has subducted into the lower mantle, a strong low-V anomaly is detected, which may reflect subslab hot mantle upwelling (SHMU) due to return flow of the slab subduction. Our model also clearly reveals the subducted slabs in the upper mantle and slab remnants in the lower mantle. In particular, a hole in the subducting Australian slab is revealed at depths of 280-460 km beneath eastern Java. The low-V anomaly in the mantle wedge above the Australian slab is connected with the SHMU through the slab hole, suggesting that mixture of the island arc magma and the SHMU may have caused huge eruptions of the Tambora and Rinjani volcanoes in eastern Java.