The Broadband Seismic Array Across the Core of Mongolian Plateau

Abstract

The Mongolian plateau, formed during the Mesozoic, represents a typical intracontinental plateau in East Asia that has maintained elevated topography over geological time. Its deep lithospheric structure and underlying geodynamic mechanisms are therefore crucial for understanding the formation and long-term evolution of intracontinental plateaus. However, owing to sparse seismic station coverage and insufficient observational density, the overall region of the Mongolian plateau has long lacked sufficient seismic data. To address this limitation, several Chinese and Mongolian research institutions jointly deployed a large-scale temporary broadband seismic array covering the entire territory of Mongolia, referred to as China Array for Mongolia (CAM). This article presents the scientific motivations, instrument performance tests, station deployment strategies, and preliminary data quality assessment of the CAM array. Analyses of early recordings from CAM stations, complemented by comparisons with nearby permanent broadband stations, indicate that despite the use of a simple shallow-burial deployment strategy, the CAM stations achieve data quality comparable with that of permanent stations, particularly in their capability to record teleseismic body waves. Based on teleseismic event statistics and synthetic travel-time simulations, we further provide a conservative estimate of the array’s resolving ability, indicating that the CAM is capable of resolving lithospheric-scale velocity anomalies beneath the Mongolian plateau with a spatial resolution of approximately 100 km. The CAM array thus provides a critical seismic data set for constructing high-resolution crust–mantle structural models and for ultimately constraining the deep origins of the “exceptionally long-lived” Mongolian plateau.