Locally Thin Crust and High Crustal VP/VS Ratio Beneath the Armenian Volcanic Highland of the Lesser Caucasus: A Case for Recent Delamination

The Arabia‐Eurasia continental collision created the Caucasus Mountains and the Anatolian and Iranian plateaus. Between the two plateaus, the Armenian Highland features young Holocene‐aged volcanoes. In this study, the P‐wave receiver functions from a new seismic array reveal a thick crust (up to ~52 km thick) beneath the Central Greater Caucasus and an unusually thin crust (32–35 km thick) beneath the northwestern part of Armenia near the Aragats stratovolcano and Gegham volcanic ridge formed by Pleistocene to Holocene monogenetic cinder cones. The average crustal VP/VS ratio in the Armenian Highland is anomalously high (≥1.9), with the highest value approaching 2.1 under the Gegham Ridge. Such high VP/VS ratios cannot be explained by an overall mafic crustal composition. Instead, the presence of partial melts is inferred in the lower crust based on the depth of the low‐velocity structure obtained by inversion of receiver function waveforms. Our study suggests that the postcollisional volcanism was potentially facilitated by the small‐scale removal of lithospheric mantle, resulting in a localized thinner crust balanced by thermal buoyancy and dynamic flow in the uppermost mantle beneath the Armenian Highland. Key Points Thin crust with unusually high VP/VS ratios is found beneath the volcanoes Aragats and Gegham in the Armenian Highland based on a new array Partial melts probably exist near the base of the crust, where high heat flow is supplied from the uppermost mantle Lithospheric mantle beneath northwestern Armenia may have been thinned or even completely removed during previous eruptions