Related papers: Widening of the Andes: an interplay between subduc…
We discuss the relationships between Andean shortening, plate velocities at the trench, and slab geometry beneath South America. Although some correlation exists between the convergence velocity and the westward motion of South America on…
Contraction, expansion and despinning have been common in the past evolution of Solar System bodies. These processes deform the lithosphere until it breaks along faults. The type and orientation of faults are usually determined under the…
We model the subduction of buoyant ridges and plateaus to study their effect on slab dynamics. Oceanic ridges parallel to the trench have a stronger effect on the process of subduction because they simultaneously affect a longer trench…
The effects of the hydration mechanism on continental crust recycling are analyzed through a 2D finite element thermo-mechanical model. Oceanic slab dehydration and consequent mantle wedge hydration are implemented using a dynamic method.…
At ultraslow, magma-poor spreading ridges, plate divergence is controlled by tectonics, with formation of detachment faults that expose variably serpentinized mantle rocks. Seismicity and the depth of seismic events in these environments…
The different slope of the Wadati-Benioff zones oriented towards east and west is considered a main asymmetry of the Earth's globe. Under the Americas they have angles of about 30o, while under the Pacific east coasts (Asia, Japan) the…
Is the present-day water-land ratio a necessary outcome of the evolution of plate tectonic planets with a similar age, volume, mass, and total water inventory as the Earth? This would be the case - largely independent of initial conditions…
Leading theories for the presence of plate tectonics on Earth typically appeal to the role of present day conditions in promoting rheological weakening of the lithosphere. However, it is unknown whether the conditions of the early Earth…
The comparative review of 2 representative segments of Africa continental margin: the equatorial western Africa and the SW Africa margins, helps in analysing the main controlling factors on their development. Early Cretaceous active rifting…
We discover a remarkable correlation between the inter-tremor time interval and the slenderness ratio of the overriding plate in subduction zones all over the world. In order to understand this phenomenon better, we perform numerical…
The stability of the lithospheric mantle beneath the ancient cratonic cores of continents is primarily a function of chemical modification during the process of melt extraction. Processes by which stable continental lithosphere may be…
Seasonal patterns associated with stress modulation, as evidenced by earthquake occurrence, have been detected in regions characterized by present day mountain building and glacial retreat in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Himalaya and the…
The Banda Arc, situated west of Irian Jaya and in the easternmost extension of the Sunda subduction zone system, reveals a characteristic bowl-shaped geometry in seismic tomographic images. This indicates that the oceanic lithosphere still…
Past efforts to interrogate the mantle's contribution to Earth's topography suffer from inadequate in-situ measurements of true bathymetry and the involvement of an empirical plate model whose presumed lithospheric density profile…
Arc volcanoes, created by magma generated from the dehydration of subducting slabs, show great variability in their sizes and along-arc spatial distributions. In this study, we address a fundamental question, namely, how do subduction zones…
Topography on a wet rocky exoplanet could raise land above its sea level. Although land elevation is the product of many complex processes, the large-scale topographic features on any geodynamically-active planet are the expression of the…
Subduction is a crucial part of the long-term water and carbon cycling between Earth's exosphere and interior. However, there is broad disagreement over how much water and carbon is liberated from subducting slabs to the mantle wedge and…
Glacial cycles redistribute water between oceans and continents causing pressure changes in the upper mantle, with consequences for melting of Earth's interior. Using Plio-Pleistocene sea-level variations as a forcing function, theoretical…
In disordered elastic systems, driven by displacing a parabolic confining potential adiabatically slowly, all advance of the system is in bursts, termed avalanches. Avalanches have a finite extension in time, which is much smaller than the…
Earth's long-lived geodynamo is difficult to reconcile with recent high estimates of the core thermal conductivity, a problem known as the new core paradox. At the same time, the long-term thermal evolution of the mantle remains uncertain,…