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western quebec and southern ontario - Department of Geology

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oadly similar continent-continent collisional processes (Carr et al. 2000). The thickness<strong>of</strong> the crust within the Grenville province varies between 30 <strong>and</strong> 48 km, with generallythinner crust in the vicinity <strong>of</strong> the WQSZ (Eaton et al. 2006).The Great Meteor Hotspot track, with its SE-NW direction, crosses the wholeWQSZ (Crough, 1981; Morgan, 1983; Sleep, 1990; McHone, 1996). Igneouscrystallization ages increase monotonically from southeast to northwest (Heaman <strong>and</strong>Kjaarsgaard, 2000). Surface features such as small-volume kimberlite eruptions can alsobe attributed to the hotspot (Heaman <strong>and</strong> Kjaarsgaard, 2000). Other surface features likeintermediate-volume alkaline magmas that occur near the edge <strong>of</strong> the craton <strong>and</strong> withinthe Appalachian orogen, could be related to the hotspot (Zartman, 1977; Eby, 1984). Thischange in the inferred near-surface expression <strong>of</strong> the hotspot proposes an evolution fromkimberlitic melts to more voluminous crustal magmatism, as the inferred hotspotinteracted with a progressively thinner lithosphere due to the motion <strong>of</strong> the overridingplate (Ma, 2009).Sykes (1980) <strong>and</strong> Ma <strong>and</strong> Atkinson (2006) suggested that the regional seismicityin the WQSZ might be localized along the hotspot track. Many large historical eventsoccurred along this trend in the Boston region, including the 1755 Cape Ann M 6.2earthquake (Ebel, 2002), the 1727 M 7 (Ebel et al., 2000), <strong>and</strong> 1638 M 6.5 (Ebel, 1998).Ma <strong>and</strong> Atkinson (2006) proposed that the hot spot track exerts control on the location <strong>of</strong>seismicity, either by thermal rejuvenation <strong>of</strong> antecedent faults, or by stress concentrationdue to a predicted large strength contrast between mafic <strong>and</strong> felsic rock in the middlecrust, similar to the events in Georgian Bay (Dineva et al., 2007).14

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