DESTRUCTION MECHANISMS OF THE NORTH CHINA CRATON: A REVIEW FROM NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS

The North China Craton (NCC) is a typical destroyed craton in China. In the past decades, a number of evidence from geophysical, geochemical and geological studies have proved that the eastern part of the NCC had been significantly destroyed or reactivated in Mesozoic and Cenozoic, indicated by extensive magmatic activities, large-scale tectonic deformation and lithospheric thinning. The dynamic process of the destruction of the NCC has been a hot issue in earth sciences and still remained in debate. Meantime, numerical simulaton has become a powerful mean to reveal the mechanism of the destruction of the NCC. Numerical simulations of NCC destruction have been carried out from the perspectives of delamination, thermal-chemical erosion, subduction dehydration and metasomatism, that have provide model support to various geophysical, geochemical or geological interpretations and helps to understand better of the mechanism of the NCC destruction. However, it has to be pointed out that the destruction of the NCC is quite complicated and the current models are mostly too simplified to sutisfy researchers because of too many limitations. To fully unsderstand the destruction mechanism and dynamic processes of the NCC, some of the following perspectives need to be taken into account: (1) turn the simulation from 2-D to 3-D models, (2) take more realistic rheologic properties of mantle rocks into accont, (3) geological constraints such as plate history be fully considered in plate reconstructions, (4) dynamic couplings of delamination, thermal-chemcial erosion and subduction dehydration be undertaken.