Title of Document: TRACING CONTINENTALWEATHERING USING LITHIUM AND MAGNESIUM ISOTOPES: INSIGHTS FROM THE CHEMICAL WEATHERING OF COLUMBIA RIVER BASALTS AND MASS BALANCE MODELING Xiao-Ming Liu, Ph.D., 2013 Directed By: Professors Roberta L. Rudnick & William F. McDonough, Department of Geology Chemical weathering is an important mechanism that changes the mass and composition of the continental c...

Valentine and Moores [Valentine JW, Moores EM (1970) Nature 228:657-659] hypothesized that plate tectonics regulates global biodiversity by changing the geographic arrangement of continental crust, but the data required to fully test the hypothesis were not available. Here, we use a global database of marine animal fossil occurrences and a paleogeographic reconstruction model to test the hypoth...

The slightly submerged Bering Shelf-Chukchi Sea region comprises over 50% of the total U.S. continental shelf area and forms a broad isthmus of continental crust connecting the North American and Asian continents (Fig. 1). Although harsh climate and remoteness make this a difficult area to work in, there has been much interest in the stratigraphic framework and evolution of sedimentary basins o...

aving considered the Earth’s formation in the last chapter, let’s now use the tools of geochemistry we acquired in the first eight chapters to consider how the Earth works. The Earth, unlike many of its neighbors, has evolved over its long history and it remains geologically active. Four and a half billion years later, it is very different place than it was first formed. Certainly one of the ma...

[1] The geometry and properties of the interface of the Cocos plate beneath central Mexico are determined from the receiver functions (RFs) utilizing data from the Meso America Subduction Experiment (MASE). The RF image shows that the subducting oceanic crust is shallowly dipping to the north at 15° for 80 km from Acapulco and then horizontally underplates the continental crust for approximatel...

Arc magmas and the continental crust share many chemical features, but a major question remains as to whether these features are created by subduction or are recycled from subducting sediment. This question is explored here using Th/La, which is low in oceanic basalts (<0 2), elevated in the continents (>0 25) and varies in arc basalts and marine sediments (0 09–0 34). Volcanic arcs form linear...

A fragment of continental crust has been postulated to underlie the young plume-related lavas of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius based on the recovery of Proterozoic zircons from basaltic beach sands. Here we document the first U-Pb zircon ages recovered directly from 5.7 Ma Mauritian trachytic rocks. We identified concordant Archaean xenocrystic zircons ranging in age between 2.5 and 3.0 ...

The long-favored paradigm for the development of continental crust is one of progressive growth beginning at approximately 4 billion years ago (Ga). To test this hypothesis, we measured initial 176Hf/177Hf values of 4.01- to 4.37-Ga detrital zircons from Jack Hills, Western Australia. epsilonHf (deviations of 176Hf/177Hf from bulk Earth in parts per 10(4)) values show large positive and negativ...

A simple model for necking and detachment of subducting slabs is developed to include the coupling between grain-sensitive rheology and grain-size evolution with damage. Necking is triggered by thickened buoyant crust entrained into a subduction zone, in which case grain damage accelerates necking and allows for relatively rapid slab detachment, i.e., within 1 My, depending on the size of the c...

The development of regional metamorphism in areas of thickened continental crust is investigated in terms of the major controls on regional-scale thermal regimes. These are: the total radiogenic heat supply within the thickened crust, the supply of heat from the mantle, the thermal conductivity of the medium and the length and time scales of erosion of the continental crust. The orogenic episod...