Superplumes: Beyond Plate Tectonics [Hardcover]

This abundantly illustrated 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 books balanced authorship has produced a state-of-the-science report on the emerging concept of superplumes. This presents a new concept to explain catastrophic events on Earth through geologic time.

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 Earths mantle is largely controlled by complex material properties including the changes in density and v- cosityassociatedwithalargevariationinthepressureandtemperatureoftheEarths 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 conveclÓ*