The 4.5-billion-year record contained in Earth’s continental crust reveals a seven-phase evolution, from an initial magma ocean to the present-day environment in which we live.
lithosphere
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
Why is the North China Craton Vulnerable to Destruction?
A new study suggests that carbonatite metasomatism, not silicate metasomatism as previously thought, was dominant prior to the removal of the North China Craton in the early Cretaceous.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Frequency Dependent Plates
Rocks stretch, break, and flow, depending on how and under which conditions they are loaded. A new formulation to better capture Earth’s rheology is explored in the context of plate thickness.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Strain Rate: The Overlooked Control on Earthquake Depth
Regional strain rate may play as significant a role as temperature in governing the depth distribution of earthquakes in mantle lithosphere.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Revealing the Arctic Crust
A new model, ArcCRUST, reveals with unprecedent resolution the geometry and the thermal state of the oceanic crust of the High Arctic and Circum-Arctic domain.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
The Many Magmatic Modifications to the African Continent
How the very slow moving African Continent, with a lithosphere of quite varied age elements and thickness, has responded to ongoing asthenospheric modification.
Posted inAGU News
Booker Receives 2017 William Gilbert Award
John R. Booker will receive the 2017 William Gilbert Award at the 2017 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, to be held 11–15 December in New Orleans, La. The award recognizes “outstanding and unselfish work in magnetism of Earth materials and of the Earth and planets.”
Posted inAGU News
Behr Receives 2016 Jason Morgan Early Career Award
Whitney Behr will receive the 2016 Jason Morgan Early Career Award at the 2016 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, to be held 12–16 December in San Francisco, Calif. The award is for significant early-career contributions in Tectonophysics.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A Hole in Earth’s Surface
Research shows that a broken lithosphere underneath the island of Hawai'i could explain the island's patterns of seismic activity.