Abstract
The acoustic basement map of the East China Sea, established by the Shanghai Offshore Petroleum Bureau with all available industry seismic data, shows the existence of a 30-km-wide, 10-km-deep basin, that we named the Ho Basin. The Ho Basin belongs to a series of elongated deep basins extending over 600 km east of the Taiwan-Sinzi Ridge and flanked to the East by a ridge named the Longwan Ridge in its northern part. This new system of basin and ridge was probably formed during middle Miocene, sometimes in between rifting episodes occurring in the Taipei Basin and Okinawa Trough. It complements the already defined system of five belts of backarc basins and associated arc volcanic ridges in the East China Sea, which are progressively younger from the Mainland China shoreline (late Cretaceous/early Tertiary) to the Okinawa Trough (Present). In order to determine the crustal thickness beneath the East China Sea continental shelf, we used a power spectrum method to calculate the depth of the top (Zt) and the centroid (Zo) of the magnetic basement by fitting a straight line through the high- and low-wave number portions of the power spectrum, respectively. Then, the depth of the base (Zb) is estimated from Zt and Zo. After optimizing the size of the data squares, we demonstrate that, except for basins more than 10 km deep, Zt corresponds to the basement depths and Zb, the depth of the Curie point, to the Moho depth. As wide-angle reflection and refraction data are scarce in the East China Sea, this method provides a way to characterize the crustal thickness of the East China Sea and to compute the theoretical heat flow values.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Chi, W.-R., Basin characterization, tectonic evolution and hydrocarbon potential of the offshore and onshore Taiwan sedimentary basins, Exploration and Research Reports, 82–114, 1996 (in Chinese with English abstract)
Deschamps, A., K. Okino, and K. Fujioka, Late amagmatic extension along the central and eastern segments of the west Philippine Basin fossil spreading axis, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 203, 277–293, 2002.
Garcia-Abdeslem, J. and G. E. Ness, Inversion of the power spectrum from magnetic anomalies, Geophysics, 59, 391–401, 1994.
Geological Suvey of Japan (GSJ) and Coordinating Committee for Coastal and Offshore Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia (CCOP), Magnetic Anomaly Map of East Asia, Miscellaneous Map Series 32, 1994.
Herman, B. M., R. N. Anderson, and M. Truchan, Extensional tectonics in the Okinawa Trough, geological and geophysical investigations of continental margins, edited by J. S. Watkins, L. Montadert, and P. W. Dickinson, pp. 199–208, Memoir of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1978.
Hilde, T. W. C., C.-S. Lee, and D. E. Vander Zouwen, Tectonic and sedimentation history of Okinawa Trough: implications for development of the East China and Yellow seas, in Korea-U.S. Conference on the Yellow Sea, 1984.
Ho, C. S., An introduction to the geology of Taiwan: Explanatory text of the geologic map of Taiwan, 192 pp., 1984.
Hsu, S.-K., J.-C. Sibuet, S. Monti, C.-T. Shyu, and C.-S. Liu, Transition between the Okinawa trough backarc extension and the Taiwan collision: new insights on the southernmost Ryukyu subduction zone, Marine Geophys. Res, 18, 163–187, 1996.
Hsu, S.-K., J.-C. Sibuet, and T.-C. Shyu, Magnetic inversion in the East China Sea and Okinawa Trough: tectonic implications, Tectonophysics, 333, 111–122, 2001.
Huang, S.-T., H.-H. Ting, R.-C. Chen, W.-R. Chi, C.-C. Hu, and H.-C. Shen, Basinal framework and tectonic evolution of offshore northern Taiwan, Petroleum Geology of Taiwan, 27, 47–72, 1992.
Huh, C.-A. and H.-Y. Chen, History of lead pollution recorded in East China Sea sediments, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 38(7), 545–549, 1999.
Hutchinson, I., The effects of sedimentation and compaction on oceanic heat flow, J. Geophys. Res., 99, 7161–7175, 1985.
Jin, X., P. Yu, M. Lin, C. Li, and H. Wang, Preliminary study on the characteristics of crustal structure in the Okinawa Trough, Oceanol. Limnol. Sin., 14, 105–116, 1983 (in Chinese with English abstract).
Kong, F., L. A. Lawver, and T.-Y Lee, Evolution of the southern Taiwan-Sinzi folded zone and opening of the southern Okinawa Trough, Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, 18, 325–341, 2000.
Lallemand, S., Y. Font, H. Bijwaard, and H. Kao, New insights on 3-D plates interaction near Taiwan from tomography and tectonic implications, Tectonophysics, 335, 229–253, 2001.
Letouzey, J., L. Sage, and C. Müller, Geological and Structural Map of Eastern Asia: Introductory Notes, 52 pp., American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, Special publication, 1988.
Liu, G.-D., Geologic-Geophysic Features of China Seas and Adjacent Regions, Science Press, Beijing, 424 pp., 1992 (in Chinese).
Menke, W., Geophysical Data Analysis: Discrete Inverse Theory, Academic Press, Orlando, Florida, 269 pp., 1984.
Okubo, Y., R.-J. Graf, R.-O. Hansen, K. Ogawa, and H. Tsu, Curie point depths of the island of Kyushu and surrounding areas, Japan, Geophysics, 50, 481–494, 1985.
Sandwell, D. T. and W. H. F. Smith, New global marine gravity map/grid based on stacked ERS1, Geosat and Topex altimetry, EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union, 75(16) Spring Meet. Suppl., 321, 1994.
Shuey, R. T., D. K. Schellinger, A. C. Tripp, and L. B. Alley, Curie depth determination from aeromagnetic spectra, Geophys. J. R. Astron. Soc, 50, 75–101, 1977.
Sibuet, J.-C. and S.-K. Hsu, Geodynamics of the Taiwan arc-arc collision, Tectonophysics, 274, 221–251, 1997.
Sibuet, J.-C., J. Letouzey, F. Barbier, J. Charvet, J.-P. Foucher, T. W. C. Hilde, M. Kimura, L.-Y Chiao, B. Marsset, C. Muller, and J.-F. Stephan, Backarc extension in the Okinawa Trough, J. Geophys. Res., 92, 14041–14063, 1987.
Sibuet, J.-C., S.-K. Hsu, C.-T. Shyu, and C.-S. Liu, Structural and kinematic evolution of the Okinawa trough backarc basin, in Backarc Basins: Tectonics and Magmatism, edited by B. Taylor, pp. 343–378, Plenum Press, New York, 1995.
Sibuet, J.-C., B. Deffontaines, S.-K. Hsu, N. Thareau, J.-P. Le Formal, C-S. Liu, and ACT party, Okinawa Trough backarc basin: Early tectonic and magmatic evolution, J. Geophys. Res., 103, 30,245–30,267, 1998.
Sibuet, J.-C., S.-K. Hsu, and E. Debayle, Geodynamic context of the Taiwan orogen, in Continent-Ocean Interactions Within East Asian Marginal Seas, edited by P. Clift, P. Wang, W. Kuhnt, and D. E. Hayes, pp. 127–158, American Geophysical Union Monograph, Washington, D.C., 2004.
Spector, A. and F. S. Grant, Statistical models for interpreting aeromagnetic data, Geophysics, 35, 293–302, 1970.
Stampolidis, A. and G.-N. Tsokas, Curie point depths of Macedonia and Thrace, N. Greece, Pure and Applied Geophysics, 159, 2659–2671, 2002.
Sun, S. C., The Tertiary basins of off-shore Taiwan, in Proc. 2nd ASCOPE Conf., pp. 125–135, Manila, 1981.
Tanaka, A., Y. Okubo, and O. Matsubayashi, Curie point depth based on spectrum analysis of the magnetic anomaly data in East and Southeast Asia, Tectonophysics, 306, 461–470, 1999.
Vander Zouwen, D. E., Structure and Evolution of Southern Okinawa Trough, University of Texas A&M, College Station, 94 pp., 1985.
Wageman, J. M., T. W. C. Hilde, and K. O. Emery, Structural framework of East China Sea and Yellow Sea, American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 54, 1611–1643, 1970.
Wang, K. and E. E. Davis, Thermal effects of marine sedimentation in hydrothermally active area, Geophys. J. Int., 110, 70–78, 1992.
Xu, W. L., R. C. Jiao, J. Y. Yue, and D. W. Wei, Geothermal study on the continent shelf of the East China Sea, Progresses in Geophysics, 10, 32–48, 1995 (in Chinese).
Yamano, M., S. Uyeda, J.-P. Foucher, and J.-C. Sibuet, Heat flow anomaly in the middle Okinawa trough, Tectonophysics, 159, 307–318, 1989.
Yang, S., S. Hu, D. Cai, X. Feng, L. Chen, and L. Gao, Present-day heat flow, thermal history and tectonic subsidence of the East China Sea Basin, Marine and Petroleum Geology, 21, 1095–1105, 2004.
Yoshii, T., Compilation of geophysical data around the Japanese islands (I), Bull. Earthquake Res. Inst., 54, 75–117, 1979 (in Japanese with English abstract).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Lin, JY., Sibuet, JC. & Hsu, SK. Distribution of the East China Sea continental shelf basins and depths of magnetic sources. Earth Planet Sp 57, 1063–1072 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03351885
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03351885