The SAMTEX Experiment: Overview and Preliminary Results
Citations Over Time
Abstract
The Kaapvaal Craton is one of the world’s best natural laboratories for studying the lithospheric mantle given the wealth of xenolith and seismic data that exist for it. The Southern African Magnetotelluric Experiment (SAMTEX) was launched to complement these databases and provide further constraints on physical parameters and conditions by obtaining information about electrical conductivity structures within the lithosphere. Initially, magnetotelluric data acquisition was planned on profiles spatially coincident with the Kaapvaal Seismic Experiment. However with seven more partners joining the original four through the course of the experiment, SAMTEX was enlarged from two to four phases of acquisition, and extended northwards to cover much of Botswana and Namibia. The complete SAMTEX dataset now comprises MT data from over 730 distinct locations in an area of over one million square kilometres, making SAMTEX the largest regional-scale MT experiment conducted to date. Preliminary images of electrical resistivity and electrical resistivity anisotropy at 100 km and 200 km, constructed through approximate one-dimensional methods, map resistive regions spatially correlated with the Kaapvaal, Zimbabwe and Angola Cratons, and more conductive regions spatially associated with the neighbouring mobile belts and the Rehoboth Terrane. Known diamondiferous kimberlites occur primarily on the boundaries between the resistive or isotropic regions and conductive or anisotropic regions.
Related Papers
- → Emplacement ages of kimberlite occurrences in the Prieska region, southwest border of the Kaapvaal Craton, South Africa(1994)60 cited
- → Upper mantle structure underlying the diamondiferous Slave craton from teleseismic body-wave tomography(2019)7 cited
- → THE “CLINOPYROXENE” PALEOGEOTHERM BENEATH THE OBNAZHENNAYA KIMBERLITE PIPE AND THIСKNESS OF LITHOSPHERE UNDER THE KUOYKA FIELD (SIBERIAN CRATON, YAKUTIA)(2022)3 cited
- → The disparities in thickness between the thermal and seismic lithosphere beneath the global Precambrian cratons and its geodynamic implications(2023)1 cited