Global variation of seismic energy release with oceanic lithosphere age

Seismic evidence for sharp lithosphere-asthenosphere boundaries of oceanic plates.

The mobility of the lithosphere over a weaker asthenosphere constitutes the essential element of plate tectonics, and thus the understanding of the processes at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) is fundamental to understand how our planet works. It is especially so for oceanic plates because their relatively simple creation and evolution should enable easy elucidation of the LAB. Dat...

The Oceanic Lithosphere

1. Background: Mid-Ocean Ridges and the oceanic lithosphere 2. Methods of study of the oceanic lithosphere 3. Components of the oceanic lithosphere and their physical properties 4. Structure of the oceanic lithosphere 4.1 ‘Homogeneous’ lithosphere 4.2 ‘Heterogeneous’ lithosphere 4.3 Hot Spot Influenced Lithosphere 4.4.Continent to Ocean Transition 5. Forming the oceanic lithosphere at the ridge...

On the Yield Strength of Oceanic Lithosphere

The yield strength of oceanic lithosphere determines the mode of mantle convection in a terrestrial planet, and low-temperature plasticity in olivine aggregates is generally believed to govern the plastic rheology of the stiffest part of lithosphere. Because, so far, proposed flow laws for this mechanism exhibit nontrivial discrepancies, we revisit the recent high-pressure deformation data of M...

Effective thermal expansivity of Maxwellian oceanic lithosphere

The thermal expansivity of oceanic lithosphere is a key mineral physics parameter that controls the rate of seafloor subsidence. Because of strongly temperature-dependent mantle rheology, effective expansivity for lithosphere as a whole could be substantially lower than indicated by mineral physics data. Viscoelastic modeling indicates that this reduction in expansivity could be as high as ∼15–...

The seismic mid-lithosphere discontinuity