Superplumes: Beyond Plate Tectonics
Buch in deiner Nähe kaufen
Beschreibung
This book provides a concise overview of our understanding of the entire mantle, its evolution since early differentiation and the consequences of superplumes for earth surface processes. The balanced, international authorship of the 18 contributions has produced a state-of-the-science report on the emerging concept of superplumes and has documented the potential of superplumes to serve as a testable model for future studies.
The topic of superplume dynamics has been treated from different angles covering the sub-disciplines of geology, geochemistry, petrology as well as geophysics (including mineral physics, seismic tomography and mantle dynamics). For instance, it is shown how transport of heat via superplumes, huge stable pipes connecting the high-temperature core with the surface land mass, could have caused mass extinctions and drastic environmental change.
Audience: Scientists, researchers and graduate students in geology, geochemistry andgeophysics, planetary scientists, astrobiologists and environmental engineers.
Forty years ago when plate tectonics was first discovered, there was a major shift in thinking in the Earth Sciences. Little was known at that time about the deep mantle because of the lack of knowledge about material properties, the absence of any seismic tomography or concepts such as mantle convection. Thus the theory of platetectonicswasbuiltonsurfaceobservationsandkinematicconstraints.Thetheory of plate tectonics is not independent but consists of several assumptions. Examples are the origin of arc magma, MORB or OIB, and the distribution of earthquakes and the plate margin processes are all part of plate tectonics theory. In the intervening years much progress has been made in all three burgeoning areas of mineral physics, seismic tomography and mantle dynamics, thanks to the technological advances in synchrotron radiation and supercomputers. Mineralphysicsstudieshaveprovidedsomeofthekeyparametersthatcontrolthe style of mantle convection. The style of convection in the Earth’s mantle is largely controlled by complex material properties including the changes in density and v- cosityassociatedwithalargevariationinthepressureandtemperatureoftheEarth’s interior. These key physical properties have become the target of both experimental andtheoreticalstudiesinmineralphysics.Startingfromtheearly90s,theadvancesin high-performance computational capability has allowed us to incorporate these m- eral physics findings into large-scale computational modeling of mantle convection; and these studies have highlighted the complexities of mantle convection caused by the variation in density due to both thermal and chemical anomalies (and viscosity) in the Earth’s deep interior.
Presenting a new concept to explain catastrophic events on Earth through geologic time, such as mass extinction and drastic environmental change Interdisciplinary in approach and authorship Abundantly illustrated with full color images
Autor*in
David A. Yuen
Themen in »Superplumes: Beyond Plate Tectonics«
Beyond plate tectonics Earth system Geoinformationssysteme Mass extinction Petrogenesis Planet Proterozoic Superplumes Trias Triassic geochemistry geophysics plate tectonics subduction tectonics
Stimmen zu »Superplumes: Beyond Plate Tectonics«
From the reviews:
“The advance in the Earth sciences exhibited in this book became possible owing to the application of up-to-date technologies, primarily of seismic tomography and petrology. … the book is recommended as the up-to-date theoretical basis for any kind of geological research: tectonic, petrologic, geophysical, mineragenic, etc. … The authors set a stress on equivocal character of their statements and outline top-priority problems of the Earth sciences to be solved, making the reviewed publication still more valuable.” (V. E. Khain and N. I. Filatova, Geotectonics, Vol. 44 (1), 2010)()