Structural evolution of the North Himalaya domes as revealed by crustal-scale seismic-reflection surveying

As the typical products of collisional orogeny, gneiss domes are important geological units with which to decipher the crustal deformation and evolutionary history of continental collision. However, their formation mechanisms remain poorly understood. This issue is well illustrated by the debate surrounding the origin of the North Himalaya gneiss dome zone, which has been attributed to middle-crustal channel flow, thrust-duplex development, extensional detachment faulting, or diapiric flow related to partial crustal melting. These models predict different internal structures within individual domes that can be tested by high-resolution seismic imaging. Here, we present newly acquired seismic-reflection data collected along an ∼120-km-long north-south traverse across the central segment of the North Himalaya gneiss dome zone. Analysis and interpretation of the seismic data constrained by surface geology observations imply that (1) the subducting Indian lower crust is decoupled from the deformed middle and upper crust in the North Himalaya, (2) a crustal-scale stack of antiformal duplexes with a structural thickness of ∼35 km defines the cores of the gneiss domes imaged by the seismic survey, and (3) highly reflective, sheetlike bodies imaged in our seismic profile are best interpreted as leucocratic intrusions developed synchronously during gneiss dome development. As a whole, our work suggests that the North Himalaya gneiss dome zone was created by coeval crustal shortening and partial melting of orogenic crust.