Abstract Rare earth element ore deposits associated with carbonatite derived from Earth’s mantle supply half of the world’s rare element. However, formation and initial enrichment transport in mantle, is unclear. Here, we image lithospheric architecture a Cenozoic belt southwestern China by integrating seismic tomography geochemical data. The subduction Indian continent caused vertical upwellin...

Plate subduction continuously transports crustal materials with high-δ(18)O values down to the mantle wedge, where mantle peridotites are expected to achieve the high-δ(18)O features. Elevated δ(18)O values relative to the upper mantle value have been reported for magmas from some subduction zones. However, peridotites with δ(18)O values significantly higher than the well-defined upper mantle v...

At the surface of the Earth, volcanism is found in several tectonic contexts. It is largely concentrated at the plate margins: at divergent plate boundaries, mid-oceanic ridges, where new tectonic plates are created, and at convergent margins, subduction zones, where the lithospheric plates dive into the mantle. In the interior of the oceanic plates, we find however linear volcanic chains, comp...

We present a parameterized convection model of Mars by incorporating a new heat-flow scaling law for stagnant-lid convection, to better understand how the evolution of Mars may be affected by mantle melting. Melting in the mantle during convection leads to the formation of a compositionally buoyant lithosphere, which may also be intrinsically more viscous by dehydration. The consequences of the...

[1] We present a multiple step procedure for joint modeling of surface wave group velocity dispersion curves and teleseismic receiver functions for lithospheric velocity structure. The method relies on an initial grid search for a simple crustal structure, followed by a formal iterative inversion, an additional grid search for shear wave velocity in the mantle, and finally, forward modeling of ...

The mantle transition zone (MTZ) discontinuities beneath the Tanzania Craton and the Eastern and Western Branches of the East African Rift System are imaged by stacking over 7,100 receiver functions. The mean thickness of the MTZ beneath the Western Branch and Tanzania Craton is about 252 km, which is comparable to the global average and is inconsistent with the existence of present-day thermal...

[1] The great earthquake sequence that occurred in the central Mississippi River Valley during the winter of 1811– 1812 is unprecedented in the historical record of seismicity within stable continental plate interiors. We show, using viscous flow models based on high resolution seismic tomography, that the descent of the ancient Farallon slab into the deep mantle beneath central North America i...

One of the more enigmatic features of the Earth’s style of mantle convection is plate tectonics itself, in particular the existence of strike-slip, or toroidal, motion. Toroidal motion is uncharacteristic of basic thermal convection, but necessarily forms through the interaction of convective flow and nonlinear rheological mechanisms. Recent studies have implied that the empirically determined ...

S U M M A R Y Mechanisms leading to the initiation and early-stage development of continental rifts remain enigmatic, in spite of numerous studies. Among the various rifting models, which were developed mostly based on studies of mature rifts, far-field stresses originating from plate interactions (passive rifting) and nearby active mantle upwelling (active rifting) are commonly used to explain...