SUTURING AND RIFTING

A Tectonics Article by Nickolas Dudek / Dudekahedron

The Questions:

The purpose of this article is to address the question as to why rifting occurs, why some
continents will suture together, and stay together, while others rift apart. The ideal modern day
example of this is the East African Rift System. Plate perspective views of this system can be
found via the buttons on the right. The entire system is interpreted to be a reactivation of orogenic
structures developed during the East African Orogen; the suturing of Australia, India,
Madagascar, South America, and Africa to make Gondwana (Corti, 2009). Yet each of these
continental plates are actually composed of smaller continents called 'Cratons' which are
themselves sutured together. Why does some suturing last, while others break apart? To
compound the question further; the Sao Francisco Craton (found in South America) used to be
part of the Congo Craton (now in Africa) and was broken apart during the rifting of super
continent Rodinia (Waele, Johnson, and Pisarevsky, 2009). How does the rifting process choose
between cutting through a craton or an existing suture?

In attempt to shed light this article is divided into three components:

Why is continental/thick Crust more susceptible to rifting than oceanic/thin crust?

Why are suture zones more prone to rifting (at least in the modern day)?
What's so special about Archean continents/cratons?

Why is Continental Crust more susceptible

to Rifting than Oceanic Crust?

Vink et al. 1984 attempted to answer this

question by making two rheologic
simplifications when dealing with the two
forms of crust on Earth; Continental crust can
be thought of as quartz dominated, riding on
an olivine-dominated basement. The oceanic
crust lacks the effects of quartz.

This gave rise to the structure seen to the

right; a profile of anisotropic tensional stress
by depth.

Continental crust, shown in red; follows any

given pore projection (0.37 shown)
downwards with depth; linearly increasing
with tensional stress. Upon reaching ~13 km;
quartz begins to plastically deform, decreasing
the strength of the continent to a minimum
around ~30 km. Here the model crust ends,
and the mafic lithosphere begins; continually
Image: Difference between horizontal and vertical tensional
stress plotted by depth. Lambda represents pore
pressures. Oceanic crust's strength boundary is plotted in blue
(note; the oceanic crust is not 35 km thick). Continental crust's
strength boundary is plotted in red. The weak layer between 13
and 30 km is the "Jelly" in the "Jelly Sandwich" strength
model. (Vink et al. 1984) Colors are overlain by the author of
this article.
strengthening to ~35 km when olivine begins
to deform (MOHO). The weak layer (13-30
km) gives rise to the "Jelly Sandwich" model.
(Vink et al. 1984)

Oceanic Crust doesn't have a quartz

dominated layer and thus does not have a
weak "Jelly" layer. (Vink et al. 1984)

The image to the right shows the cumulative

strength of crust dependent on its thickness.
Crust remains comparably strong until ~15 km
depth where quartz rheologic effects result in
a thicker and thicker "Jelly" layer. Strength
levels off at ~50 km depth where the the crust
effectively has zero strength. (Vink et al.
1984)

What can be seen is that a continental plate 35

km thick is ~3x weaker than oceanic plate.
This has the obvious implication that
thickened lithosphere, like found in orogenic
belts, such as the African Orogeny, are thus
even weaker. (Vink et al. 1984)

Thus it is less energy intensive for a rift to cut

a continent. Perhaps this can be used to
explain why the Congo and Sao
Francisco craton was split apart; the
alternative would be to perpendicularly cut Image: Cumulative strength of crustal stack by depth. Oceanic
through the Brasilliano-Damara Orogen; a crust represents the strongest possibly configuration.
complex highly structured and magmatically Increasing thickness results in weaker crust by virtue of the
altered belt (Corti, 2009), (Gray 2007) "Jelly Sandwich" argument. (Vink et al. 1984)

Image: The Jelly Sandwich model. The top layer is the

quartz brittle layer. The middle layer is where quartz
begins to plastically deform; this layer is the critical
weak layer of continental crust. The bottom layer is an
olivine dominated brittle layer. The entire sandwich is
35 + km thick.
Image: Gondwana and its contained cratons. The Congo Craton can be seen in the middle of Africa
with a limb that extends into South America. This limb becomes the Sao Francisco Craton. The
Brasiliano-Damara Orogen is represented as blue irregular lines.
 Why are suture zones prone to rifting in the
modern day?

As mentioned in the section above, continental

crust is more susceptible to tensional stresses
than oceanic crust, and the issue is only
compounded with thicker crust like in
orogenies (Vink et al. 1984).

This however is not the only factor that affects a

continent's ability to tear. Another critical
aspect controlling rifting and rift propagation is
the amount of damage the crust involved has
already accumulated, and how fast the crust is
healing. (Lyakhovsky et al. 2012).

This notion of inherited damage may be the

solution to the 'tectonic force paradox'; the
seeming tensional-stress deficit to tear apart
thick lithosphere without plutonic assistance
(Karner, et al. 2004), (Lyakhovsky et al. 2012).

The results of the modeling done by

Lyakhovsky et al. (2012) show that rifting is the
result of earthquake induced brittle damage
effectively winning out over elastic recovery of
microcracks; the latter driven by high pressures,
high temperatures, and low shear -without the
need of magmatic activity. This sort of process
is used to explain the Red Sea, and the rifting of
the Arabian and Nubian Plates (Lyakhovsky et
al. 2012).

Inherited damage, found in great abundance

within orogenic belts are then reactivated during
Image: 3D simulation of tensile strain through a section of rifting, like in the East African Rift (Corti,
damaged continental crust. 'Rift initiation' refers to a location 2009).
where a pre-defined weak location was created to help initiate
rifting. (Lyakhovsky et al. 2012)
It is important to note that other theories exist to
aid in rifting specifically in the olivine-
dominated lower lithosphere; water weakening,
diffusion to dislocation creep within olivine,
and change in grain size (Lyakhovsky et al.
2012).
An aside; if the rate of healing for a region is relatively low compared to tectonic forcing then any
significant tectonic event will re-fracture the semi-healed cracks and microcracks, resulting in an
earthquake swarm that isn't associated with volcanism (Lyakhovsky et al. 2012). More on earthquake
swarms can be found via the links on the right:
Why are Archean sutures more resilient
than more recent ones?

This question is really about continent

formation. The African Arabian system is
notable in this regard due to the Kaapval
Craton.

The Kaapval Craton is the oldest craton

known, having formed as early as 3.7 bya
(Corti, 2009), (Karner et al., 1992). 3.7-3.2
bya, during the period of amalgamation,
intra-crustal melting produced an upper
layer of granite converting what was Image: Location of Cratons worldwide. The Kaapval craton is
located in the far-South of Africa. Why do continents like Africa
previously several sutured greenstone belts
behave so cohesively despite being only an amalgamation of smaller
into a 'true' continental platform with a parts?
significant thickness of 40 km, and a
lithospheric root between 170 and 350 km
in depth (Karner et al., 1992). This
corresponded with a time when crustal
growth rate was 3-4 times the average rate
of the Phanerozoic due to a hotter earth
(Karner et al. 1992). Crustal healing rates,
being partly dependent on temperatures
(Lyakhovsky et al. 2012), would thus be
heightened during the Archean.

The Kaapval Craton is within the South-

East of the Nubian Plate;
Image: Artist's impression of what the Archean may have looked
Another Theory? like. Image taken from the Natural History Museum, London,
England.
Given that every craton is smaller than the
continent it is within, one is lead to
question whether wider continents are less
stable than smaller ones. This notion has
been used to explain why super continents
like Pangaea rifted apart; the mechanism
being the continent itself insulating the
mantle, eventually heating it up. However
modeling done by Philip J. Heron and
Julian P. Lowman (2011) indicate that
temperatures below a super continent do
not increase significantly over the
timescale that supercontinents typically
exist.
Image: Geo-modelers returning the insulation theory back to
geologists. The author of this article was quite fond of the
insulation theory.
Concluding statement:

The intense heat, magmatic activity, and continental growth during the Archean likely
resulted in collided cratons whose boundaries healed and were fused together more
quickly than what is observed in modern day (Karner et al. 1992), (Lyakhovsky et al.
2012). Today, suture/orogenic zones are preferentially chosen for by tensional forces
as sites of rifting due to thickened (intrinsically weaker) continental crust and
inherited damage from the original orogeny (Vink et al. 1992), (Lyakhovsky et al.
2012). Although the depth of a continent is an important factor for instability (Vink et
al. 1992), greater surface area and associated insulation of the mantle is not
significant to the instability of a continent(Heron and Lowman, 2011).

Word Count: 1046

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