Crystals from Fagradalsfjall’s eruption mark how mantle magma might have been moving years before geophysical indicators alerted scientists to unrest.
Earth’s interior
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Small-Scale Convection Shuffles the Oceanic Lithosphere
Seafloor spreading organized lithospheric minerals into a lattice, but small-scale convection jumbled up the innermost layer.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
The Crust Travels to the Earth’s Core and Back in Record Time
Subduction of continental crust around the Gondwana supercontinent may explain the mantle Dupal anomaly of the southern hemisphere.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Can Anelastic Attenuation of Oceanic Mantle be Reliably Measured?
A new study demonstrates that robust anelastic attenuation measurements can be made across ocean bottom seismic arrays at different locations using surface wave array analysis.
Posted inNews
Billion-Year Rewind Tracks Supercontinents and Mantle Structures
Scientists have traced past pathways of tectonic plates back a billion years using computer models, with intriguing results. Incorporating geologic data as a check on model output, however, has proven tricky.
Posted inAGU News
Making Waves
Sources of tsunamis are undersea, underground, and under the microscope in our October issue.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Global Seismic Networks: Recording the Heartbeat of the Earth
Global broadband seismographic networks have provided the science community with 30 years of data which is being used to understand the Earth.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
New Map of Proposed Mantle-Driven Topography Stirs the Pot
The role the deep Earth plays in creating topography is hotly debated. A new study uses subtle elevation changes around the globe as evidence that the mantle plays a key role in building topography.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Old Igneous Rocks Hold the Key to Crustal Thickness Evolution
The chemical composition of orogenic igneous rocks and their zircons is sensitive to crustal thickness and can be used to quantify the evolution of Moho depths beneath continents back in time.
Posted inNews
Earth’s Lower Mantle Is Drier Than Previously Thought
Scientists have long known that the two layers of Earth’s mantle have different chemical compositions. Now, modeling shows that different water concentrations may keep them from mixing.