Brazil's Borborema Province

The Borborema Province of Brazil is part of the Pan African mobile belt that sutured the Archean West African and Congo cratons to form the central Gondwanaland supercontinent. Although the continuation of major Precambrian lineaments in Brazil, such as the Patos and Pernambuco shear-zones and the Transbrasiliano lineament well into Africa attest to prerift continuity, the post-rift morphology of these conjugate margins contrast markedly. We intend to delineate the lithospheric structure of the Borborema Province with integrated passive and active seismic surveys, which include acquiring over 2000 km of deep seismic refraction data and 200 km of deep reflection data and deploying a PASSCAL experiment of 40 broadband stations for ~2 years along the controlled-source lines. In addition to addressing key tectonic issues intrinsic to the Borborema massif, these surveys will be a fundamental complement to an ongoing study sponsored by NSF to study the volcanism along the Cameroon Volcanic Line.

This is a collaborative project between the University of South Carolina, Northwestern University, and Cornell University (currently under review in the NSF Geophysics program) and an ongoing Brazil-sponsored, multi-institutional, multidisciplinary effort in the Borborema Province.