Effective Elastic Thickness of Southeast Part of Arctic Ocean-Eurasia Continent-Pacific Ocean Geoscience Transect

The effective lithospheric elastic thickness of the continent is an important parameter for examination of the large-scale structure and analyses of the mechanism of isostatic compensation within the plate, and a parameter standing for the strength of the lithosphere. The T_e values along Quanzhou-Heishui, the southeast section of the Arctic Ocean-Eurasian Continent-Pacific Ocean geoscience transect, are estimated by using the coherence technique developed by Forsyth.Studies of the feature of the coherence between gravity and topography suggest that at short wavelengths(6.6-100 km) for each data box that is used to estimate T_e, the plate is strong enough to support topographic loads and gravity and topography are uncorrelated.At long wavelengths where the plate is deflected by surface and subsurface loads are compensated by the flexure model.Sichuan land-stone with low heat-flow values has high T_e values whereas in Ninghua, Datian, land-stone with high heat-flow values has low T_e, values, which reflects a correlation, low heat-flow values corresponding to high T_e values and high heat-flow values corresponding to low T_e values. T_e values can be divided into two sections: northwest high section and southeast low section.There is roughly a positive correlation between crustal thickness and effective elastic thickness of the lithosphere.