Abstract:

“Openingclosing” tectonics is a new hypothesis for studying the opening and closing movements and evolution of the earth. Different spatiotemporal openingclosing tectonics have different geological features that need to be studied from different perspectives. In this paper, we demonstrated the applications of openingclosing tectonic theory in geotectonic division, seismic activity and interpreting modern geodesy results, by the examples of large openingclosing tectonic zones in the Mediterranean and medium sized in the eastern Dabie orogenic belt. The results showed that (1) the bordering regions of Asia, Europe and Africa can be divided into six tectonic assemblages: Russian, African and North, Central, South and East Asian tectonic assemblages; (2) earthquakes in the bordering regions are mainly distributed in Cenozoic openingclosing tectonic transition zones between tectonic assemblages; (3) the seismic profile and focal mechanism study indicated that the current tectonic movement in the MediterraneanTurkeyIranAfghanistan tectonic transition zone is dominated by “closing” motion; and (4) modern crustal deformation observations around the eastern Dabie orogenic belt, such as ground tilt and strain in the Shizishan, Huangmei and Macheng areas, and observations from GNSS and mobile gravity surveys in the area, indicate a low tendency for tectonic evolution from “closing” to “opening” on a short time scale, suggesting the “openingclosing” movement can be a common mechanism for some correlated tectonic events occurred simultaneously in the region.

Key words:  tectonic division, opening-closing tectonic, earthquake, crustal deformation observation, Dabie orogenic belt