The Superior Province is the largest of several Archean cratons which form the nuclei of the North American continent. In western Ontario, the exposed rocks exemplify the "classic" Precambrian Shield of the province. And outstanding feature of the Superior Province is an internal pattern of 100-200 km wide lithotectonic belts formed by an array of contrasting granite-greenstone, metaplutonic, and metasedimentary regions known as subprovinces. Geological relationships between and within these subprovinces can be explained by a modern tectonic model of terrane accretion of oceanic crust, island arcs, sedimentary prisms and continental fragments at a convergent plate margin during the period 3200-2650 Ma. Studies of these relationships to understand further the processes involved in the formation, assembly and stabilization of the internal pattern will test the accretionary tectonic model, which predicts that large segments of greenstone belts are allochthonous and that metasediments extend in part beneath granite-greenstone terranes. The transect will utilize an extensive geoscientific data base of high quality geological and aeromagnetic maps, precise age dates and modern structural results obtained by recent research in the region. Existing data indicate that the Superior Province may have the deepest lithospheric root and fastest seismic velocities in North America. Passive, multi-component, broadband teleseismic procedure will be applied to investigate sub-crustal lithospheric structure.

Publications