A PROGRESS REVIEW OF TECTONIC MAP COMPILATION IN CHINA IN PERSPECTIVE OF OFFSHORE MAPPING

A tectonic map is a vehicle to express author's understanding of tectonic patterns and its evolution processes and dynamic mechanism, under the guidance of a tectonic theory. The Plate Tectonics Theory was established during the 1970s and 1980s after a long time of debate, and has been accepted by most of the tectonic geologists of the world. However, arguments remain in tectonic map compilation due to the diverse understanding of the mapping elements selected by different authors. The compilation of a tectonic map lays its basis on data accumulation. A great amount of high quality geological and geophysical data has been acquired recently in China, in particular in China Seas. However, the survey and research data in China Seas in the past ten years have not yet been integrated into a tectonic map covering the whole country, including both land and sea. And the understanding of tectonics in offshore China is far behind that in the land portion. Therefore, an integrated or comparative study on various geological, geophysical and geochemical data or methods from a unified viewpoint of both land and sea has become an urgent need to the study of the tectonics in China. In this paper, we, from a standpoint of marine tectonic study, made a review on the history, tectonic theories, data availability concerning Chinese tectonic map compilation and discussed the way for improvement. The methods we used in the compilation of "Tectonic Framework Map of China Seas and Land" are introduced as a new try to solve the problems mentioned above.