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Tectonophysics
Donald L. Turcotte
Cornell University
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
Mantle Convection
Rheology
Plate Tectonics
Hotspots and Plumes
Continents
Earthquakes
Fractals, Chaos, and Self-Organized
Criticality
VIII. Conclusions
GLOSSARY
Elastic rebound Relative motion between plates causes
elastic deformation of the plates adjacent to a fault;
when slip occurs on the fault, the plates rebound.
Fractals Statistical distribution in which the number of
objects has a power-law dependence on their size.
Lithosphere Cool rigid outer shell of the earth that is
capable of transmitting elastic stresses.
Mantle convection The solid interior of the earth flows
like a fluid in response to gravitational buoyancy forces.
Plate tectonics The lithosphere of the earth is broken into
a series of plates that are in relative motion with respect
to each other.
Plume Quasi-cylindrical flows in the mantle responsible
for hotspot volcanism.
Stick-slip Behavior of faults that causes earthquakes.
Subduction zone Region adjacent to an ocean trench
where the oceanic lithosphere bends and sinks into the
interior of the earth.
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motion between plates at plate boundaries results in volcanism, earthquakes, and mountain building.
The earths surface is made up of ocean basins and
continents. The ocean basins participate in the plate tectonic cycle but the continents do not. The continental crust
is thicker and less dense than the oceanic crust. Plates
with continental crust are gravitationally stable and cannot be subducted. However, continents ride along with
the relative motions of the plates resulting in continental
drift. At times, these motions result in continental collisions, a major source of mountain building. Mountain
ranges are extremely complex, with deformation occurring on a wide range of scales involving both brittle and
fluid-like deformation. However, the statistical aspects of
this deformation appear to obey simple fractal relationships. Continental tectonics can certainly exhibit deterministic, chaotic behavior and may involve examples of
self-organized criticality.
I. MANTLE CONVECTION
A fluid layer that is heated from below or within and cooled
from above is likely to convect. The near-surface fluid is
cooler and more dense than the fluid at depth; the surface
fluid will tend to sink and the hotter, less dense fluid at
depth will rise. A simple example of a fluid layer heated
from below is illustrated in Fig. 1; the temperature T0 of
the upper boundary is lower than the temperature T1 of the
lower boundary. Cooling from above creates a cold thermal boundary layer adjacent to the upper boundary that
is gravitationally unstable and forms a cold descending
plume. Similarly, a hot thermal boundary layer is created
adjacent to the lower boundary that is also gravitationally
unstable and forms a hot ascending plume. The gravitational body forces in the plumes drive a cellular convective
FIGURE 1 Thermal boundary-layer structure of two-dimensional thermal convection in a fluid layer heated from
below.
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Further evidence that the solid rocks of the mantle behaved as a fluid came from studies of postglacial rebound.
In Scandinavia, the thick glacial ice cover depressed the
area during the last ice age. The result was that, after the
ice cover melted, the area rebounded and shorelines were
elevated. In 1937 N. A. Haskell used this rate of elevation to quantify the fluid behavior of the solid mantle.
Although his results were not generally recognized for
another 30 years, today his values are still accepted as
being basically correct. But the question remained, Why
should a solid exhibit a fluid-like behavior? In the 1950s,
laboratory studies showed that solids near their melting
temperature behave as fluids. The flow of crystalline ice
in glaciers is one example. It was recognized that the diffusion of vacancies (vacant lattice sites) and the movement
of dislocations (crystal irregularities) in stress fields could
lead to the very slow displacements associated with the
flow of glaciers and the mantle. Today our concepts of
solid-state creep, rebound of depressed areas, and mantle
convection are all completely consistent with each other.
Mantle convection carries heat upward through the interior of the earth. The required velocities are a few centimeters per year: an apparently low velocity but, on geological time scales, capable of drifting continents. Continental
drift is a natural consequence of mantle convection.
The earth behaves like a heat engine. Thermal convection converts heat into flows. These flows are responsible
for plate tectonics and, either directly or indirectly, volcanism, earthquakes, and mountain building.
II. RHEOLOGY
Rheology is the science of deformation. Rocks can exhibit
a wide range of rheologies including elastic, fracture, plastic, and viscous. Tectonic consequences include faults and
folds as well as mantle convection.
At atmospheric pressure and room temperature most
rocks are brittle; that is, they behave nearly elastically until they fail by fracture. Cracks or fractures in rock along
which there has been little or no relative displacement are
known as joints. They occur on a wide range of scales in all
types of rocks. Joints are commonly found in sets defining
parallel or intersecting patterns of failure related to local
stress orientations. The breakdown of surface rocks by
erosion and weathering is often controlled by systems of
joints along which the rocks are particularly weak and susceptible to disintegration and removal. These processes in
turn enhance the visibility of the jointing. Faults are fractures across which there has been a relative displacement.
Although fracture is important in shallow crustal rocks
at low temperatures and pressures, there are many circumstances in which rocks behave as a ductile material.
In determining the transition from brittle to ductile behavior, pressure, temperature, and strain rate are important.
If the confining pressure of rock is of the order of the
brittle strength of the rock, a transition from brittle to ductile behavior will occur. This transition typically occurs
at a depth of about 10 km. To model the ductile behavior
of crustal and mantle rocks, it is often appropriate to use
an idealized elastic-perfectly plastic rheology. An elasticperfectly plastic material exhibits a linear elastic behavior
until a yield stress is reached. The material can then be
deformed plastically an unlimited amount at this stress.
At temperatures that are a significant fraction of the
melt temperature the atoms and dislocations in a crystalline solid become sufficiently mobile to result in creep
when the solid is subjected to deviatoric stresses. At very
low stresses diffusion processes dominate, and the crystalline solid behaves as a Newtonian fluid with a viscosity
that depends exponentially on the pressure and the inverse
absolute temperature. At higher stresses the motion of dislocations becomes the dominant creep process, resulting
in a non-Newtonian or nonlinear fluid behavior that also
has an exponential pressure and inverse absolute temperature dependence. Mantle convection and continental drift
are attributed to these thermally activated creep processes
as discussed above.
Rocks can behave elastically on short time scales but as
a fluid on long time scales. Such behavior can be modeled
with a rheological law that combines linear elastic and viscous rheologies. A material that behaves both elastically
and viscously is known as a viscoelastic medium.
Folding is evidence that crustal rocks also exhibit ductile behavior under stress. Pressure solution creep is a
mechanism that can account for the ductility of crustal
rocks at relatively low temperatures and pressures. This
process involves the dissolving of minerals in regions of
high pressure and their precipitation in regions of low pressure. As a result, creep of the rock occurs. Folding can also
result from the plastic deformation of rock.
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FIGURE 2 Distribution of the major surface plates. The ridge axes, subduction zones, and transform faults that make
up the plate boundaries are shown.
boundary layer associated with the loss of heat to the surface of the earth. Because the viscosity of mantle rock is
exponentially temperature dependent, the cold lithosphere
is essentially rigid and behaves as a series of nearly rigid
plates. Ascending convection is associated with ocean
ridges. New seafloor is created at ocean ridges and the
seafloor spreads away from the ridge axis at a velocity u
as illustrated in Fig. 3.
As the ocean lithosphere moves away from the ocean
ridge where it was created, it cools and becomes gravitationally unstable with respect to the rock beneath. The
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upward to fill the gap. The upwelling mantle rock cools
by conductive heat loss to the surface. The cooling rock
accretes to the base of the spreading plates, becoming
part of them; the structure of an accreting plate margin is
illustrated in Fig. 4.
As the plates move away from the ocean ridge, they
continue to cool and thicken. Seafloor depth as a function of age is shown in Fig. 5. As the lithosphere cools, it
contracts thermally and becomes denser; as a result, its upper surfacethe ocean floorsinks relative to the ocean
surface. The topographic elevation of the ocean ridge is
due to the lower-density, thinner, and hotter lithosphere
near the axis of accretion at the ridge crest. A simple heat
loss model (half-space cooling model) predicts that the
subsidence is proportional to the square root of age. This
is a good approximation for young seafloor as shown in
Fig. 5 but overestimates the subsidence for seafloor older
than about 100 Ma. This deviation can be attributed to the
heating of the base of the oceanic lithosphere by mantle
plumes. This heating is approximated by assuming a plate
model with a specified lithosphere thickness. The data appear to favor a maximum lithosphere (plate) thickness of
125 km as shown in Fig. 5. The elevation of the ridge
also exerts a gravitational body force that drives the lithosphere away from the accretional boundary; it is one of
the important forces driving the plates and is known as
gravitational sliding or ridge push.
Ocean ridges generate a large fraction of the Earths
volcanism. Because almost all the ridge system is below
sea level, only a small part of this volcanism can be readily
observed. Ridge volcanism can be seen in Iceland, where
FIGURE 4 Structure of an accretional plate margin (x is the horizontal coordinate and y the vertical coordinate). The rigid lithosphere, thickness yL , spreads away from the ridge axis at velocity
u0 . The solid contours are isotherms; the seafloor has a temperature T0 and the mantle beneath the lithosphere has a temperature
T1 . Mantle material flows along the dashed lines to fill the gap
created by the spreading lithospheres. The depth of the subsiding
seafloor relative to the ridge axis is w.
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FIGURE 6 Illustration of the subduction of the oceanic lithosphere at an ocean trench. The line of volcanic edifices associated with most subduction zones is shown. A substantial fraction
of the sediments that coat the basaltic oceanic crust is scraped off
during subduction to form an accretionary prism of sediments. In
some cases, back-arc spreading forms a marginal basin behind
the subduction zone.
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V. CONTINENTS
The basic facets of plate tectonics do not require continents. But without continents little or no land would rise
above sea level and life as we know it would not exist.
FIGURE 7 Locations of 38 prominent hotspots are shown. In some cases, the associated hotspot tracks and flood
basalt provinces are also shown.
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The continental crust is much thicker than the oceanic
crust (40 vs 6 km) and contains primarily silicic rocks
that are less dense than the basaltic rocks of the oceanic
crust. The result is that the continental lithosphere is gravitationally stable and resists subduction. Because of the
plate tectonic cycle, the seafloor has an average age of
only about 100 Ma and the oldest seafloor has an age of
about 200 Ma. The mean age of the continents is greater
than 2 Ga and some parts have ages greater than 3 Ga.
A. Continental Drift
The continents are rafted about on the plates, resulting in
continental drift. The earliest arguments for continental
drift were based largely on the fit of the continents. Ever
since the first reliable maps were available, the remarkable fit between the east coast of South America and the
west coast of Africa has been noted. The fit was pointed
out as early as 1620 by Francis Bacon. North America,
Greenland, and Europe also fit as illustrated in Fig. 8. Detailed arguments supporting continental drift were given
by the well-known German meteorologist Alfred Wegener
in 1915. Wegeners book included his highly original picture of the breakup and subsequent drift of the continents
and his recognition of the supercontinent Pangea. Later
it was argued that there had formerly been a northern
continent, Laurasia, and a southern continent, Gondwanaland, separated by the Tethys ocean. Wegener assembled
a formidable array of facts and conjectures to support his
case, including the match between mountain belts in South
America and Africa; similar rock types, rock ages, and
fossil species are found on the two sides of the Atlantic
Ocean. Tropical climates had existed in polar regions at
the same times that arctic climates had existed in equatorial regions. Also, the evolution and dispersion of plant
and animal species were best explained in terms of ancient
land bridges, suggesting direct connections between now
widely separated continents.
Although the qualitative arguments favoring continental drift appear convincing today, they were summarily
rejected by the vast majority of earth scientists during the
first half of the 20th century. Only with the acceptance of
mantle convection and plate tectonics did continental drift
receive general acceptance.
B. Delamination and the Origin
of the Continental Crust
There is no evidence that the continental lithosphere is
subducted. This is attributed to the buoyancy of the continental crust, which results in the continental lithosphere
being gravitationally stable. However, the mantle portion of the continental lithosphere is sufficiently cold and
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FIGURE 8 The remarkable fit between the continental margins of North and South America and Greenland, Europe,
and Africa is illustrated. This fit was one of the primary early arguments for continental drift.
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VI. EARTHQUAKES
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FIGURE 10 Destruction in San Francisco caused by the magnitude 8.3 earthquake, April 18, 1906, and the subsequent fire. It is estimated that there was 3000 deaths and about 28,000 buildings were destroyed.
(1)
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FIGURE 11 Illustration of the stick-slip and elastic-rebound behavior of faults. (a) After an earthquake the fault sticks and the relative plate velocity u0 causes an elastic deformation of the plates.
(b) As elastic distortion occurs the stress builds up in the plates
until the fault slips. (c) Slip on the fault results in elastic rebound,
the fault sticks, and the process repeats.
if ri is the length of the step used in measuring the perimeter and Ni the number of steps:
Pi = Ni ri = C /riD1 .
(2)
The shorter the step, the longer the perimeter; D is usually about 1.25. Because of scale invariance, the length of
the coastline increases as the length of the measuring rod
decreases according to a power law; the power determines
the fractal dimension of the coastline. It is not possible to
obtain a specific value for the length of a coastline, owing
to all the small indentations, down to a scale of millimeters
or less.
Many geological phenomena are scale invariant. Examples include the frequency-size distributions of rock
fragments, faults, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and oil
fields. The empirical applicability of power-law statistics
to geological phenomena was recognized long before the
concept of fractals was conceived. A striking example
is the GutenbergRichter relation for the frequencymagnitude statistics of earthquakes. The proportionality factor in the relationship between the logarithm of
the number of earthquakes and earthquake magnitude is
known as the b-value. It has been recognized for nearly
50 years that, almost universally, b = 0.9. It is now accepted that the GutenbergRichter relationship is equivalent to a fractal relationship between the number of earthquakes and the characteristic size of the rupture; the value
of the fractal dimension D is simply twice the b-value;
typically D = 1.8 for distributed seismicity.
An example for earthquakes in southern California
is given in Fig. 12. The fact that the distribution of
earthquakes is a fractal is evidence that the distribution
of faults on which the earthquakes are occurring is also a
fractal. Crustal deformation is occurring on all scales in a
scale-invariant manner. Although the deformation is complex and chaotic, the deformation satisfies scale-invariant
fractal statistics.
Fractal concepts can also be applied to continuous distributions; an example is topography. Mandelbrot has used
fractal concepts to generate synthetic landscapes that look
remarkably similar to actual landscapes. The fractal dimension is a measure of the roughness of the features.
The earths topography is a composite of many competing
influences. Topography is created by tectonic processes including faulting, folding, and flexure. It is modified and
destroyed by erosion and sedimentation. There is considerable empirical evidence that erosion is scale invariant and fractal; a river network is a classic example of a
fractal tree. Topography often appears to be complex and
chaotic, yet there is order in the complexity. A standard
approach to the analysis of a continuous function such as
topography along a linear track is to determine the coefficients An in a Fourier series as a function of the wavelength
n . If the amplitudes An have a power-law dependence on
the wavelength n , a fractal distribution may result. For
topography and bathymetry it is found that, to a good approximation, the Fourier amplitudes are proportional to
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VIII. CONCLUSIONS
Mantle convection and plate tectonics provide a general
framework for understanding tectonophysics. Transport
of heat from the interior of the earth drives solid-state
convection. Plate tectonics is a direct consequence of this
convection. The relative velocity between plates causes
crustal deformation at the boundaries between plates. In
some cases this deformation is diffuse and is spread over
a broad area. Volcanism occurs at most plate boundaries
and is also responsible for crustal deformation.
Although we now have a general understanding of
tectonophysics, we are still not able to predict earthquakes.
Deformation on a local scale is extremely complex. In
fact, it is quite likely that local deformation is so complex and chaotic that it is fundamentally impossible to
make predictions of earthquakes. Only risk assessments
will be possible. There is increasing evidence that scaleinvariant, fractal statistics are applicable to a variety of
tectonophysics problems. One possible application is the
direct association of large earthquakes with small earthquakes; a risk of a great earthquake is present only where
small earthquakes are occurring and the level of local seismicity can be used to assess the seismic hazard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fowler, C. M. R. (1990). The Solid Earth, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Press, F., and Siever, R. (1997). Understanding Earth, W. H. Freeman,
San Francisco.
Turcotte, D. L. (1997). Fractals and Chaos in Geology and Geophysics,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Turcotte, D. L., and Schubert, G. (1982). Geodynamics, Wiley, New
York.