Subduction initiation is a critical link in the plate tectonic cycle. Intraoceanic subduction zones can form along transform faults and fracture zones, but how subduction nucleates parallel to mid-ocean ridges, as in e.g., the Neotethys Ocean during the Jurassic, remains a matter of debate. In recent years, extensional detachment faults have been widely documented adjacent to slow-spreading and...

SUMMARY Fluids associated with subducting slabs play a crucial role in regulating the dynamics of water discharge, subsequent arc magmatism and intermediate-depth earthquakes subduction zones. The incoming slab mantle hydration is primarily determined by deep normal faulting due to plate bending at trench. However, controlling factors on outer rise pattern, correlation between inherited deforma...

Deformation in the Earth is rarely homogeneous and often occurs in narrow regions of concentrated strain referred to as zones of shear localization. Mylonites found in the continental crust are the manifestation of shear localization (White et al. 1980) and, at the largest scale, shear localization is proposed to be crucial for the generation of tectonic plates from a convecting mantle (Bercovi...

The determination of the crustal structure is essential in geophysics, as it gives insight into the geohistory, tectonic environment, geohazard mitigation, etc. Here we present the latest advance on three-dimensional modeling representing the Tibetan Mohorovičić discontinuity (topography and ranges) and its deformation (fold), revealed by analyzing gravity data from GOCE mission. Our study show...

Recent studies of continental deformation have treated the lithosphere as a viscous media and investigated the time evolution of the deformation caused by tectonic and buoyancy forces. We examine the differences between continuum models that keep velocity boundary conditions (b.c.) constant with time and models that keep stress b.c. constant with time and demonstrate these differences by using ...