Magmatic fluid moves up in the ductile zone through porosity waves, accumulates in high-porosity lenses, and migrates across the brittle zone in a convection pattern involving also meteoric fluid.
Earth’s crust
Earth’s Continents Share an Ancient Crustal Ancestor
How did today’s continents come to be? Geological sleuths found clues in grains of sand.
Crustal Motion and Strain Rates in the Southern Basin and Range Province
New research teases out variations in strain rates and explores potential earthquake hazards across the southern Basin and Range and Colorado Plateau.
A 360-degree View of Crustal Magmatic Systems
A new book presents an overview of crustal magmatic systems and explores variations within these systems through analytical, experimental, and numerical approaches.
Susan L. Beck Receives 2020 Walter H. Bucher Medal
Susan L. Beck was awarded the 2020 Walter H. Bucher Medal at the virtual AGU Fall Meeting in December. The medal is for “original contributions to the basic knowledge of the crust and lithosphere.”
Probing the Age of the Oldest Ocean Crust in the Pacific
A new study extends the calibration of the Mesozoic Sequence down to the Mid Jurassic with multiscale marine magnetic anomaly data, demonstrating extraordinarily high reversal frequency.
Taking the Temperature of Antarctica’s Crust
How do you measure the geothermal heat flux in a continent covered by an ice-sheet? A new study uses correlations of diverse global observables and produces a heat flow map of the entire Antarctica.
Deconvolving What Lies Beneath the Himalaya
A new study that combines constraints from the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, forward models of deforming crust, and thermochronology data gives new insights into the structure of the Himalaya.
Cratons Mark the Spot for Mineral Bonanzas
A new map of the thickness of Earth’s lithosphere contains clues to large deposits of key metals.
Structural Style Controls Crustal Fluid Circulation in Andes
Variations in hot spring geochemistry from adjacent mountain ranges with different styles of faulting highlight the influence of crustal-scale structures on circulating fluids in the Peruvian Andes.