The Triassic-Jurassic boundary (Tr-J; ∼201 Ma) is marked by a doubling in the concentration of atmospheric CO2, rising temperatures, and ecosystem instability. This appears to have been driven by a major perturbation in the global carbon cycle due to massive volcanism in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. It is hypothesized that this volcanism also likely delivered sulphur dioxide (SO2) to...

Convection in an isolated planet is characterized by narrow downwellings and broad updrafts--consequences of Archimedes' principle, the cooling required by the second law of thermodynamics, and the effect of compression on material properties. A mature cooling planet with a conductive low-viscosity core develops a thick insulating surface boundary layer with a thermal maximum, a subadiabatic in...

Completion of a global geological map of Venus has provided documentation of the relative age relationships, spatial distribution, and topographic configuration of the major geologic units and permitted us to address several important problems concerning the volcanic history of Venus. We use these data to: 1) assess the stratigraphic position of volcanic units and landforms, 2) determine their ...

Figure 11 Average depth of magma lens reflections beneath ridges versus spreading rate. The curved line shows the depth to the 12003C isotherm calculated from the ridge thermal model of Phipps Morgan J and Chen YJ (1993) Journal of Geophysical Research 98: 6283}6297. Data from different ridges are labeled Reykjanes Ridge (RR), Juan de Fuca Ridge (JdF), Costa Rica Rift (CRR), Lau Basin (Lau), no...

Volcanism is a substantial process during crustal growth on planetary bodies and well documented to have occurred in the early Solar System from the recognition of numerous basaltic meteorites. Considering the ureilite parent body (UPB), the compositions of magmas that formed a potential UPB crust and were complementary to the ultramafic ureilite mantle rocks are poorly constrained. Among the A...

Andean volcanism occurs within the Andean Volcanic Arc (AVA), which is the product of subduction of the Nazca Plate and Antarctica Plates beneath the South America Plate. The AVA is Earth’s longest but discontinuous continental-margin volcanic arc, which consists of four distinct segments: Northern Volcanic Zone, Central Volcanic Zone, Southern Volcanic Zone, and Austral Volcanic Zone. These se...

Lunar volcanic deposits are dominated by areally extensive mare units occurring in regionally low areas predominantly on the lunar near side. Data obtained from lunar orbit and earth-based observations have been used to extend the detailed characterizations derived from Apollo and Luna sample return missions to other parts of the moon. Mare volcanism occurred over a period of about 1.3 billion ...

Satellite altimetry is used to identify and characterize Pacific intraplate seamounts. The gravimetric amplitudes of seamounts appear to be related to the age difference between seafloor and seamounts; by inverting this relationship pseudo ages can be obtained for undated seamounts. These pseudo ages imply that excursions in seamount volcanism generally correlate with times of formation of larg...