Qiangtang terrane

The Qiantang terrane is one of three main west-east-trending terranes of the Tibetan Plateau.

Location of Qiangtang Terranes. Bangong-Nujiang Suture Zone separates it from the Lhasa Terrane, which in turn is separated by the Indus-Yarlung suture zone from the Himalayas in the south.

Tectonic map of the Himalaya, modified after Le Fort & Cronin (1988). Red is Transhimalaya. Green is Indus-Yarlung suture zone, north of which lies Lhasa terrane, follow by Bangong-Nujiang Suture Zone and then Qiangtang terrane.

During the Triassic, a southward-directed subduction along its northern margin resulted in the Jin-Shajing suture, the limit between it and the Songpan-Ganzi terrane. During the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, the Lhasa terrane merged with its southern margin along the Bangong suture.^[1] This suture, the closure of part of the Tethys Ocean, transformed the Qiantang terrane into a large-scale anticline.^[2] The merging of the Lhasa and Qiangtang terranes resulted in the uplift of a palaeoplateau known as the Qiangtang Plateau,^[3] which rapidly thinned later in the Cretaceous.^[4]

The Qiantang terrane is now located at c. 5,000 m (16,000 ft) above sea level, but the timing of this uplift remains debated, with estimates ranging from the Pliocene-Pleistocene (3–5 Mya) to the Eocene (35 Mya) when the plateau was first denudated.^[5]

See also

Qiangtang terrane related (from south to north)

• Geology of the Himalaya
• Indus Suture Zone

• Transhimalaya, includes following:
  • Lhasa terrane
  • Karakoram fault system

• High pressure metamorphic terranes along the Bangong-Nujiang Suture Zone
• Qiangtang terrane