Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Historical Background
- 2 Plate Tectonics
- 3 Structure and Composition of the Mantle
- 4 Mantle Temperatures and Thermodynamic Properties
- 5 Viscosity of the Mantle
- 6 Basic Equations
- 7 Linear Stability
- 8 Approximate Solutions
- 9 Calculations of Convection in Two Dimensions
- 10 Numerical Models of Three-dimensional Convection
- 11 Hot Spots and Mantle Plumes
- 12 Chemical Geodynamics
- 13 Thermal History of the Earth
- 14 Convection in the Interiors of Solid Planets and Moons
- 15 Nature of Convection in the Mantle
- References
- Appendix: Table of Variables
- Author Index
- Subject Index
2 - Plate Tectonics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Historical Background
- 2 Plate Tectonics
- 3 Structure and Composition of the Mantle
- 4 Mantle Temperatures and Thermodynamic Properties
- 5 Viscosity of the Mantle
- 6 Basic Equations
- 7 Linear Stability
- 8 Approximate Solutions
- 9 Calculations of Convection in Two Dimensions
- 10 Numerical Models of Three-dimensional Convection
- 11 Hot Spots and Mantle Plumes
- 12 Chemical Geodynamics
- 13 Thermal History of the Earth
- 14 Convection in the Interiors of Solid Planets and Moons
- 15 Nature of Convection in the Mantle
- References
- Appendix: Table of Variables
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Introduction
During the 1960s there were a wide variety of studies on continental drift and its relationship to mantle convection. One of the major contributors was J. Tuzo Wilson. Wilson (1963a, b, 1965a, b) used a number of geophysical arguments to delineate the general movement of the ocean floor associated with seafloor spreading. He argued that the age progression of the Hawaiian Islands indicated movement of the Pacific plate. He showed that earthquakes on transform faults required seafloor spreading at ridge crests. During this same period other geophysicists outlined the general relations between continental drift and mantle convection (Orowan, 1964, 1965; Tozer, 1965a;Verhoogen, 1965). Turcotte and Oxburgh (1967) developed a boundary layer model for thermal convection and applied it to the mantle. According to this model, the oceanic lithosphere is associated with the cold upper thermal boundary layer of convection in the mantle; ocean ridges are associated with ascending convection in the mantle and ocean trenches are associated with the descending convection of the cold upper thermal boundary layer into the mantle. Despite these apparently convincing arguments, it was only with the advent of plate tectonics in the late 1960s that the concepts of continental drift and mantle convection became generally accepted.
Plate tectonics is a model in which the outer shell of the Earth is broken into a number of thin rigid plates that move with respect to one another. The relative velocities of the plates are of the order of a few tens of millimeters per year. Volcanism and tectonism are concentrated at plate boundaries.
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- Mantle Convection in the Earth and Planets , pp. 16 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001