Upper mantle convection beneath northwest China and its adjacent region driven by density anomaly

Introduction The northwest of China includes Tarim, Junggar and Qaidam basins, and Kunlun, Tianshan, Altun and Qilian mountains, as well as the north part of the Tibetan Plateau. For a long time, the study of lithosphere structures and dynamics in this area has been a popular topic in geoscience, and has yielded many results. For example, TANG (1994) and LI et al (1998) suppose that the tectonic structure of Tarim Basin is various with geological periods, which changes many times betwee…