Geoelectrical structure of the Archean Serrinha Block and surroundings, Northeastern

Brazil, obtained from 3D modeling of magnetotelluric measurements

Mauricio S. Bologna (IAG/USP, CEOAS/OSU), Gary Egbert (CEOAS/OSU), Anna Kelbert (CEOAS/OSU), Marcelo B. Pádua
(INPE), Ícaro Vitorello (INPE), Antonio Padilha (INPE), Edson E. S. Sampaio (CPGG/UFBA)

Copyright 2013, SBGf - Sociedade Brasileira de Geofísica a ca. 500 km-long profile in the northern sector of the
This paper was prepared for presentation during the 13 th International Congress of the Borborema Province. Since then, several other MT
Brazilian Geophysical Society held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 26-29, 2013.
profiles with different orientations from one another have
Contents of this paper were reviewed by the Technical Committee of the 13 th been performed, making the data distribution over the
International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society and do not necessarily
represent any position of the SBGf, its officers or members. Electronic reproduction or area highly uneven.
storage of any part of this paper for commercial purposes without the written consent
of the Brazilian Geophysical Society is prohibited.
______________________________________________________________________ Traditionally, interpretation of MT data has been
performed with basis on 2-D inversions at individual
profiles. A major reason for this is that 3-D inversions of
Abstract MT data still have high computational costs, and hence
demand plenty of time. In addition, data acquisition using
array configuration, which is ideal for 3-D inversions, is
Results from a three-dimensional inversion of usually far more expensive and logistically more
broadband magnetotelluric (MT) data collected at 68 complicated than data acquisition along profiles. Despite
stations, deployed along six intersecting profiles, are the data distribution of the INCTET program is suitable to
evaluated for accuracy and potentiality for yielding 2-D interpretations, preliminary analysis suggested the
tectonic information. The MT profiles have different presence of 3-D electromagnetic effects in the MT data.
orientations from one another, making the data One of the sources of distortion is the coast effect (e.g.,
distribution over the area unusual for 3-D modeling. Ranganayaki and Madden, 1980). Pádua et al. (2007), for
The study area is located in the northeastern part of example, observe that this effect is significant in the
the São Francisco Craton and encompasses an Borborema Province even for those sites located 100 km
Archean nucleus, the Serrinha Block, ruptured by a from the coastline. Furthermore, in some cases we have
rifted basin developed mostly in early Cretaceous observed phases out of quadrant at sites thought to be
times during the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean. free from the influence of the coast effect, suggesting that
The inversion were performed using the Modular other distortion sources, probably related to the geologic
System for EM inversion (ModEM) with 13 periods complexity of the region, may be present.
from 0.01 to 3200 seconds on a 3 x 3 km grid. The
inversion results indicate the presence of several Here we performed 3-D inverse modeling of a subset of
conductive deep bodies beneath the central part of MT data from the INCTET program to evaluate for
the Archean Serrinha block, probably associated with accuracy and potentiality for yielding tectonic information.
the closure of the ancient Itapicuru ocean. At The dataset comprised 68 broadband MT sites deployed
uppermost mantle depths we observed a lateral along six intersecting profiles near the border of the
transition of resitivity nearly coincident with the Northern São Francisco Craton and the Borborema
surface position of the strong crustal conductors. Province (Figure 1). The study area encompasses an
Therefore, It seems that our model has imaged a Archean nucleus, the Serrinha Block, ruptured by a rifted
important limit within the lithosphere of the Archean basin developed mostly in early Cretaceous times during
Serrinha Block. the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean. To the east, the
block is obscured by the Early Cretaceous Tucano-Jatobá
rift basin and the Neoproterozoic Sergipano fold belt to
Introduction the east, and bounded by the Salvador-Curaçá belt to the
west. The Serrinha block is composed of Archean gneiss-
The National Institute of Science and Technology of migmatite terrains and Paleoproterozoic supracrustal
Tectonic Studies (INCTET) encompasses several sequences of the Rio Itapicuru and Rio Capim greenstone
Brazilian research institutions, joining geoscientists belts, both intruded by several syn- and late-tectonic
specialized in different techniques and methodologies. granitoids associated to the Transamazonian orogeny.
The scope of the program is to study the deep Despite the important contributions given mainly by
lithospheric structures of Northeastern Brazil, particularly geochronogical and isotopical studies in the past years
the Borborema Province and the adjoining São Francisco (e.g., Figueiredo, 1989; Barbosa and Sabaté, 2004; Rios
Craton, in order to understand the tectonic structure and et al., 2009; Oliveira et al., 2010), the tectonic evolution of
present dynamics of the region. The INCTET includes the area is still a matter of debate, in part due to the lack
data acquisition of two deep seismic refraction of geophysical data capable of providing information
experiments, broad band seismographic stations in about its lithospheric structure. The most striking result
selected areas and hundreds of magnetotelluric (MT) from our study were the presence of strong crustal
soundings. The first MT sites were acquired in 2005 along conductors in the central part of the Archean Serrinha

Thirteenth International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society

 Geoelectrical structure of the Archean Serrinha Block and surroundings
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Block spatially coincident with an lateral variation at lower
crust and uppermost mantle depths.

Method and Data Analysis are almost 1-D for periods shorter than 10 seconds, i.e.,
curves for xy- and yx-components have similar shapes
The MT method utilizes a large range of transient and the diagonal responses are weak, and poorly
variation of the geomagnetic field as the signal source for estimated compared with the previous two sites.
determining the structure of electrical resistivity of the
Earth's interior. The MT signals are generated primarily We performed decomposition of the impedance tensor
by global thunderstorms in the lower atmosphere and based on Groom-Bailey method (McNeice and Jones,
interactions between the solar wind and Earth's 2001). The procedure failed in recovering an adequate
magnetosphere. According to the principle of regional 2-D response for most of the sites. In general the
electromagnetic induction, such fluctuations induce parameter are period-dependent, changing their values
electric currents inside the Earth and its distribution and abruptly at periods around 1-10 seconds. In addition, the
magnitude depend on the electric structure of the vertical transfer functions, which are generally useful for
subsurface. The electrical conductivity is determined from assessing lateral contrasts in electrical resistivity within a
the relationship between the orthogonal components of certain region, display a complex pattern of tipper
electric and magnetic fields observed on the surface. The directions, and there is no clear strike, even on individual
depth of investigation of the method depends on the profiles. All of this characteristics provides further
period of oscillations and the conductivity of the medium. evidences for 3-D complications.
In general, signals ranging from milliseconds to 1000 s
probe depths from tens of meters to tens of kilometers.
But in regions with low resistivity, the signal is attenuated
more quickly, reducing the depth of the research method.. 3-D inversion

We used ModEM, a 3-D regularized inversion code

The five-channel MT data employed in this work were (Egbert and Kelbert, 2012), to fit the full impedance (all
collected using broadband instruments (GMS06, four complex components), plus the vertical magnetic
METRONIX Gmbh) at 68 locations from six intersecting fields Tz components, at 13 selected periods
profiles with an average site spacing of 12 km. Typical logarithmically spaced between 0.01-3200 s. The forward
occupation time was of at least 1-2 days per site. The mesh consisted of 102 x 112 x 53 nodes with a nominal
time series were processed using a robust processing grid spacing in the central core of 3 km horizontally,
code (Egbert, 1997), resulting in most cases in response resulting in at least three element columns per MT station
curves over the period range from 0.001 s to 410 s. increasing geometrically downward from 50 m thickness
Longer periods (up to ~3,200 s) with good quality were at the surface. Poor-quality data were removed from the
obtained in some stations along the northernmost E-W dataset, and error floors were set at 5 per cent of |ZxyZyx|1/2
profile and at a few stations in other profiles (excluding for impedances, and at 0.03 for Tz. Several models were
the sedimentary basin, where the electric fields are generated using half space prior models with different
strongly attenuated). A single site processing gave resistivities. The preferred solution (Figures 4 and 5) used
usually good responses possibly as a consequence of the a 100 ohm-m as the prior, which converged to a
low levels of cultural noise. normalized root mean square (rms) misfit of 2.94 in 282
iterations. Even for this relatively small dataset from the
Figure 2 exemplifies the MT results for three INCTET program the parallel code required about 3 hours
representative sites, displayed as sounding curves per iteration on 16 processors (2.40 Hz) and 24 Gb of
(apparent resistivity and phase) for all four components of available RAM.
the impedance tensor. Site ser003a is within the
Salvador-Curaçá belt. Apart from some scattering at
specific periods, associated with 60-Hz transmission lines
and around 10 seconds, curves are smooth, and the data Results
appear to be of good quality. However phase values for
the xy-component go out of quadrant, exceeding 90
degrees for periods higher 1 second. The diagonal A very robust feature in all of the inversion models is a set
components are very well resolved, and are of the same of strong (~1 ohm-m) crustal conductors extending from
order of magnitude as the off-diagonal components. All of the northern part to the southwestern part of the Serrinha
these characteristics suggest that the data maybe 3-D, Block, roughly following the shape of the western edge of
particularly for periods higher than 1 second. Site the Block (Figures 3 and 4). The depth to the top of these
ser010a, located in the Serrinha Block, has smooth anomalies is about 7 km at the eastern edge and tend to
responses along the entire period range for all become deeper (~12 km) to the west.
components. The yx-component phases leave quadrant
from periods between 1 and 10 seconds. Similarly to the There are several other anomalies evident in the Figure 3,
site from the Salvador-Curaçá belt, responses at the site as for example, a zone of high conductivity beneath the
ser010a also suggest strongly 3-D complications, central-eastern part of the Tucano Basin. Despite that the
displaying large amplified diagonal components. For site zone seems to extend to higher depths, it is unlikely that
ser017a, located over the sedimentary basin, the curves the data have enough resolution to map the base of this
conductor. In this place, the conductance is relatively high

Thirteenth International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society

 Bologna, Egbert, Kelbert, Pádua, Vitorello, Padilha, Sampaio
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3

due to the presence of conductive sediments up to 10 km the low heat flow values (46-51 mWm-2;; Vitorello et al.,
thick (Magnavita et al., 1994). In addition, the soundings 1980) for the area, the electrical resistivity of dry silicate
lack periods longer than 410 s in this segment of the minerals (e.g., Constable, 2006) is too high to explain the
study area, limiting the MT investigation to only few of observed lithospheric mantle values. Then, some
tens of depth. interconnected conductive phase must be present, such
as carbon, water, melts or volatiles. One plausible
At depths around 25 km the geoelectric model obtained in mechanism could be related to delamination of the
this work displays elongated resistors alternating with Serrinha Block during late stages of the Transamazonian
conductive structures aligned in the NE-SW direction. orogeny. The upper mantle conductivity increase could be
Crustal thickness inferred from a S wave regional associated with the replacement of a delaminated
tomographic model for the South American continent lithosphere by a more fertile, volatile-rich sublithospheric
(Feng et al., 2007) is 35-38 km for the study area. mantle material.
Therefore, the anisotropic pattern of resistivity is probably
representative of the lower crust across the entire area. .
Acknowledgments
At deeper depths there is a consistent lateral contrast of
resistivity nearly coincident with the position of the crustal This study was funded by CNPq through the INCTET
conductors inside the Serrinha Block. To the west, across project number 573713/2008-1. Support for M.S. Bologna
the Gavião Block, Salvador-Curaçá and western margin while at Oregon State University was made possible
of the Serrinha Block the subsurface is moderately through a postdoctoral fellowship from the Program
resistive (200-300 ohm-m), while below the central- Science without Borders (CNPq 202368/2011-4). The
eastern part of the model the resistivity decrease about authors are grateful to the dedicated field and lab crew of
one order of magnitude. the Geomagnetism Group at INPE.

Discussion References

The study area is characterized by a complex spatial Barbosa, J.S.F., Sabaté, P., 2004. Archean and
pattern of conductivity anomalies. The most prominent paleoproterozoic crust of the São Francisco Craton,
ones are concentrated along the western margin of the Bahia, Brazil: geodynamic features. Precambrian
Archean Serrinha Block. The surface position of these Research 133, 1-27.
features is nearly coincident with several Constable, S., 2006. SEO3: a new model of olivine
Paleoproterozoic syn- to post-collisional granitoids that electrical conductivity of olivine, dunite and the mantle.
occur near the contact between the Archean basement of Journal of Geophysical Research, 166, 435-437.
the Serrinha Block and the Paleoproterozoic Rio Itapicuru Egbert, G.D., 1997. Robust multiple-station
Greenstone Belt (RIGB). Based on the presence of magnetotelluric data processing. Geophysical Journal
ultramafic complexes along this contact led Oliveira et al., International, 130, 475-496.
(2010) to invoke a suture zone. In this context, the MT Feng, M., Van der Lee, S., Assumpção, M., 2007. Upper
anomalies can be associate with the closure of the mantle structure of South America from joint inversion
ancient Itapicuru ocean in which large amount of carbon- of waveforms and fundamental mode group velocities
rich metasediments were tectonically emplaced into deep of Rayleigh waves, Journal of Geophysical Research,
crustal levels. Therefore the most plausible mechanism to 112, B04312, doi:10.1029/2006JB004449.
explain the very high conductivity of these anomalies
Figueiredo, M.C.H. 1989. Geochemical evolution of
would be the presence of graphite. Carbon-rich rocks on
eastern Bahia, Brazil: a probable Early Proterozoic
the surface have been observed in the mafic sequence of
subduction-related magmatic arc. Journal of South
the RIGB. Further support for the presence of carbon in th
American Earth Sciences 2, 131- 145.
region are diamondiferous rocks from the Braúna
kimberlite field. Magnavita, L.P., Davison, I., Kusznir, N.J., 1994. Rifting,
erosion, and uplift history of the Reconcavo-Tucano-
Jatoba Rift, Northeast Brazil. Tectonics 13, 367-388.
To the east, beneath the central-eastern Tucano basin we McNeice, G.W., Jones, A.G., 2001. Multisite,
observe a zone of high conductivity, which can represent multifrequency tensor decomposition of magnetotelluric
an thickening of the sedimentary rocks. Alternatively, the data. Geophysics, 66, 158-173.
anomaly could be a deep feature of the basement. If true,
Oliveira, E.P., McNaughton, N.J., Armstrong, R., 2010.
this could constrain the origin of the rift basin, which
Mesoarchaean to Palaeoproterozoic growth of the
proposed models generally invoke control by low-angle
northern segment of the Itabuna–Salvador–Curaçá
major crustal detachments (Ussami et al., 1986) or
orogen, São Francisco craton, Brazil. In: Kusky, T.M.,
flexural isostatic response associated with magmatic
Zhai, M.-G., Xiao, W. (Eds.), The Evolving Continents:
underplating and uplift (Magnavita et al., 1994). Longer
Understanding Processes of Continental Growth: Geol.
periods will be necessary for reliable interpretation of this
Soc. London, Spec. Publ., 338, pp. 263-286.
anomaly.
Pádua, M. B., Vitorello, I., Padilha, A. L., 2007. 3-D
modeling of coast effects in MT soundings at the
The central-eastern mantle lithosphere of the Serrinha Borborema Province (NE Brazil), Tenth International
Block is relatively conductive (<60 ohm-m). Considering

Thirteenth International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society

 Geoelectrical structure of the Archean Serrinha Block and surroundings
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Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society, Rio de Bahia, Brazil) constrained by U-Pb single zircon
Janeiro, Brazil. geochronology. Precambrian Research 170, 175-201.
Ranganayaki, R.P., and Madden, T.R., 1980. Generalized Ussami, N., Karner, G.D., Bott, M.H.P., 1986. Crustal
thin sheet analysis in magnetotellurics: an extension of detachment during South-Atlantic rifting and formation
Price' analysis, Geophysical Journal of the Royal of Tucano-Gabon basin system. Nature 322, 629-632.
Astronomical Society, 60, 445-457. Vitorello, I., Hamza, V.M., Pollack, H.N., 1980. Terrestrial
Rios, D.C., Davis, D.W., Conceição, H., Davis, W.J., heat flow in the brazilian highlands. Journal of
Rosa, M.L.S., Dickin, A.P., 2009. Geologic evolution of Geophysical Research 85, 3778-3788.
the Serrinha nucleus granite-greenstone terrane (NE

Figure 1 - Simplified geological map of the northeastern Sao Francisco craton: 1, Sergipano fold belt; 2a,
Nordestina batholith; 2b, Ambrosio dome; 3a, Rio Itapicuru greenstone belt; 3b, Rio Capim greenstone belt; 4a,
Santa Luz complex; 4b, Mairi complex. The thick gray line is the limit between the Sao Francisco Craton and the
Borborema Province. Acronyms in inset figure are: BOR, Borborema province; PNB, Parnaiba basin; SA, Salvador
city; SFC, São Francisco craton.

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Figure 2 – Apparent resistivity and phase of three representative sites. Site ser003a is on the Salvador-Curaca Belt, in the
western part of study area. Site ser010a is representative of the Serrinha Block, in the central part of the region, while the
site ser017a is a typical response from the sedimentary Tucano basin. The upper panel displays the off-diagonal
components. We can observe the phases of the xy- and yx-components leaving the quadrant at the sites ser003a and
ser010a, respectively. At the site ser017a, responses are almost 1D for most part of the data. The lower panel shows the
diagonal components. It can be seen that the diagonal are very well resolved for the sites ser001a and ser010a, with
amplitudes of the same magnitude of the off-diagonal components. In the basin, as expected, diagonal responses are very
weak. Dashed lines are the predicted responses from the 3D inversion using ModEM code.

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 Geoelectrical structure of the Archean Serrinha Block and surroundings
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Figure 3 – Inverse model at depth of 10 km. Line indicates location of profile A-A' shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 – Cross section along A-A'. The black star is the Brauna Kimberlite field. Dash line is the average Moho taken from
regional seismological data (Feng et al., 2007).

Thirteenth International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society