Basement structures of East and South China Seas and adjacent regions from gravity inversion

• Basement structures of ECS and SCS are determined based on gravity inversion.
• The basement reveals many tectonic structures which are missed by the bathymetry.
• Distributions of basement depressions are controlled by the faults in ECS and SCS.
• In ECS and SCS, the basement and the Moho undulations have a mirror–image relation.

The satellite-derived gravity gives us an opportunity to investigate the basement structures of the East and South China Seas since the satellite gravimetry could provide large scale gravity data with high resolution of 1 arc-min by 1 arc-min. We isolate the residual gravity anomaly corresponding to the basement by subtracting the gravity anomalies of sediments and Moho undulations from satellite-derived free-air gravity anomalies. Two methods, namely gravity inversion method and convolution method based on flexure isostasy model, are used to calculate the Moho undulations in order to guarantee the accuracy of the Moho undulations since it occupies large percentages of the gravity anomalies. We invert the isolated gravity anomaly for the basement depths of East and South China Seas and adjacent areas with resolution of 1 arc-min by 1 arc-min. The basement depths of East and South China Seas range from 0.5 km to 12 km and the Moho depths vary between 6 km and 32 km. The basement topography reveals many tectonic depressions and two spreading axes concealed by the sediments, which are unseen in the bathymetry. The two spreading axes correspond to the spreading ridges derived from magnetic anomaly and the SW–NE oriented spreading axis extends SW much farther than that identified from magnetic anomaly, almost reaching to the Nam Con Son Basin. We also find that the faults constrain the distributions of basement depressions since the faults usually lie along the places where large changes of basement depth take place. Reversely, the basement map could be used to identify the unknown faults. Besides, according to the four profiles in the East and South China Seas, the mirror–image relation was found between the basement topography and the underlying Moho undulations that when the basement depth increases or decreases, the corresponding Moho depth decreases or increases.