Bushveld Province

Fig. 1. Map showing station locations, topography and principal geological provinces in the region of study within southern Africa, Fifty-five broadband (REFTEK/STS-2) stations were installed in April 1997 in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Stations in light blue were redeployed in April 1998 to sites indicated in yellow. A total of 82 sites were occupied over the two year deployment. In addition, three global seismic network broadband stations (white triangles) are located in the region and their data incorporated in the analysis. The array extends from the Cape Fold Belt in the south, through the Proterozoic Namaqua-Natal Mobile Belt, across the Kaapvaal Craton and Bushveld Province, through the Archaean Limpopo Mobile Belt and into the Zimbabwe Craton. On the west, the array covers part of the Kheis and Okwa Proterozoic Fold and Thrust Belts of Botswana and western South Africa. To the east, the array extends into the Early Archaean Barberton terrane, near the NW border with Swaziland. Published in James et al., GRL28, 2001, fig. 1.

The regions of modified cratonic mantle such as that associated with the Bushveld Province are cautionary in terms of a central assumption of... 

The evidence reported by Nguuri et al. (2001) for a thick crust and a relatively diffuse Moho in the Bushveld Province supports the argument for a broadly continuous mafic body at depth beneath the Bushveld Complex (Cawthom et al. 1998 Webb et al. 2000 Cawthom Webb 2001). The substantial load of material added to the cmst during the Bushveld event was interpreted by Webb and coworkers to have produced a downward crustal flexure of up to 6 km with a resultant crustal thickness of 45-50 km beneath stations located in the central Bushveld Province (Webb et al. 2000). 

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