Buckling instabilities of subducted lithosphere beneath the transition zone

Ribe, Neil M.; Stutzmann, É.; Ren, Yong; Hilst, R. van der

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2006.11.028

Cited by 113 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…As the slab accumulates in the transition zone, alternating phases of somewhat higher and lower retreat velocities (with accompanying changes in dip) tend to develop Lee and King, 2011;Čížková and Bina, 2013;Garel et al, 2014). These fluctuations are an expression of slab buckling, because even where the slab flattens at the base of the transition zone, the deformation is essentially a buckling response (Houseman and Gubbins, 1997;Ribe et al, 2007), as is seen most clearly in models with weaker slabs or ones where sinking is enhanced (Lee and King, 2011;Čížková and Bina, 2013;Cerpa et al, 2014). Trench-motion fluctuations due to buckling can be enhanced if the upper plate can break and heal (Clark et al, 2008).…”

Section: Role Of Upper Plate and Mantle Resistance: External Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies have concluded that the lower-mantle anomalies correspond to thicker volumes of material than the upper-mantle slabs, even considering limitations of seismic resolution. Several studies have estimated that some slabs, e.g., the Cocos, Java, and Hellenic slabs, thicken by a factor of 4-5 upon entering into the lower mantle, to widths of ~400 km (Ribe et al, 2007;Loiselet et al, 2010), or even 400-700 km for the slabs below North America (Sigloch and Mihalynuk, 2013); while thickening in the lower-mantle slab anomalies below the Indian plate has been estimated to be about a factor of 3 (Hafkenscheid et al, 2006). Such strong thickening has commonly been attributed to slab buckling that starts in the transition zone (Ribe et al, 2007;Běhounková and Čížková, 2008;Lee and King, 2011).…”

Section: Seismic Tomography: Lower-mantle Slabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have estimated that some slabs, e.g., the Cocos, Java, and Hellenic slabs, thicken by a factor of 4-5 upon entering into the lower mantle, to widths of ~400 km (Ribe et al, 2007;Loiselet et al, 2010), or even 400-700 km for the slabs below North America (Sigloch and Mihalynuk, 2013); while thickening in the lower-mantle slab anomalies below the Indian plate has been estimated to be about a factor of 3 (Hafkenscheid et al, 2006). Such strong thickening has commonly been attributed to slab buckling that starts in the transition zone (Ribe et al, 2007;Běhounková and Čížková, 2008;Lee and King, 2011). Thickening has been inferred to be less for some of the older penetrating slabs below the western Pacific (Marianas, Kermadec, Loiselet et al, 2010) but may still be a factor of two, an amount which can also be achieved by simple compressional thickening (Gurnis and Hager, 1988;Běhounková and Čížková, 2008).…”

Section: Seismic Tomography: Lower-mantle Slabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subduction-transition zone interaction: A review

et al. 2017

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Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ABSTRACTAs subducting plates reach the base of the upper mantle, some appear to flatten and stagnate, while others seemingly go through unimpeded. This variable resistance to slab sinking has been proposed to affect long-term thermal and chemical mantle circulation. A review of observational constraints and dynamic models highlights that neither the increase in viscosity between upper and lower mantle (likely by a factor 20-50) nor the coincident endothermic phase transition in the main mantle silicates (with a likely Clapeyron slope of -1 to -2 MPa/K) suffice to stagnate slabs. However, together the two provide enough resistance to temporarily stagnate subducting plates, if they subduct accompanied by significant trench retreat. Older, stronger plates are more capable of inducing trench retreat, explaining why backarc spreading and flat slabs tend to be associated with old-plate subduction. Slab viscosities that are ~2 orders of magnitude higher than background mantle (effective yield stresses of 100-300 MPa) lead to similar styles of deformation as those revealed by seismic tomography and slab earthquakes. None of the current transition-zone slabs seem to have stagnated there more than 60 m.y. Since modeled slab destabilization takes more than 100 m.y., lower-mantle entry is apparently usually triggered (e.g., by changes in plate buoyancy). Many of the complex morphologies of lower-mantle slabs can be the result of sinking and subsequent deformation of originally stagnated slabs, which can retain flat morphologies in the top of the lower mantle, fold as they sink deeper, and eventually form bulky shapes in the deep mantle.

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Section: Role Of Upper Plate and Mantle Resistance: External Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seismic Tomography: Lower-mantle Slabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seismic Tomography: Lower-mantle Slabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subduction-transition zone interaction: A review

et al. 2017

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“…Comparison of geodynamic (plate tectonic) models and tomographic models globally indicates that slab masses sink into the lower mantle more or less vertically at rates of 1-2 cm/yr, but they do so as 'walls' that are on the order of 600 km thick, an order of magnitude greater than the thickness of an ocean- ic slab (van der Meer et al 2010;Steinberger et al 2012). Where oceanic slabs descend at a high angle from a stable trench line, they meet resistance at the 660-km discontinuity due to increased viscosity and endothermic phase change, causing the slab to fold back and forth on itself like a pleated skirt (Ribe et al 2007). Eventually, resistance is overcome and the whole stack slowly descends under the influence of gravity.…”

Section: ) His Most Controversial Paper Is the Great Alaskan Termentioning

confidence: 99%

The Tooth of Time: The North American Cordillera from Tanya Atwater to Karin Sigloch

Hoffman¹

2013

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“…Computational models may modify plate strength and rheological laws to a variety of subduction styles (Stegman et al, 2010b, a;Garel et al, 2014;Petersen et al, 2015). Subducted slabs may pile at the upper/lower mantle boundary, as suggested of the Australian plate below Java and the Cocos plate below Central America, (Ribe et al, 2007), may penetrate in the lower mantle (Zhong and Gurnis, 1995), and may lie flat along the boundary (Fukao et al, 2001). While tomographic evidence does not reveal the interior structure of observed piles, Ribe et al (2007) assert that observed structures are "too large to be easily explained by a mechanism other than buckling.…”

Section: Weak Slabsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The subduction dichotomy of strong plates and weak slabs

2017

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Abstract. A key element of plate tectonics on Earth is that the lithosphere is subducting into the mantle. Subduction results from forces that bend and pull the lithosphere into the interior of the Earth. Once subducted, lithospheric slabs are further modified by dynamic forces in the mantle, and their sinking is inhibited by the increase in viscosity of the lower mantle. These forces are resisted by the material strength of the lithosphere. Using geodynamic models, we investigate several subduction models, wherein we control material strength by setting a maximum viscosity for the surface plates and the subducted slabs independently. We find that models characterized by a dichotomy of lithosphere strengths produce a spectrum of results that are comparable to interpretations of observations of subduction on Earth. These models have strong lithospheric plates at the surface, which promotes Earth-like single-sided subduction. At the same time, these models have weakened lithospheric subducted slabs which can more easily bend to either lie flat or fold into a slab pile atop the lower mantle, reproducing the spectrum of slab morphologies that have been interpreted from images of seismic tomography.

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Buckling instabilities of subducted lithosphere beneath the transition zone

Cited by 113 publications

References 32 publications

Subduction-transition zone interaction: A review

Subduction-transition zone interaction: A review

The Tooth of Time: The North American Cordillera from Tanya Atwater to Karin Sigloch

The subduction dichotomy of strong plates and weak slabs

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