Project Summary
Continents and sedimentary basins through time record fundamental Earth system cycles, reflecting environmental change, migration of fauna and flora and shifting coastlines. It was originally thought that successive advances and retreats of shallow inland seas mainly reflect global sea level variations (eustasy). It is now well known in principle that large-scale surface morphology such as the high topography of the East African Rift, the low-lying Amazon River Basin and the southwest to northeast tilt of the Australian continent are strongly controlled by processes deep within the Earth, but progress has been slow in quantifying the magnitude and time-dependence of these relationships. … Read more…
Subduction System Response to Ribbon Collision: Implications on the Intra‐Plate Force Balance and the Style of Slab Deformation
Using three-dimensional numerical models, the authors investigate how a buoyant ribbon of thickened oceanic crust colliding with a subduction zone disturbs stress and strain within the subducting slab and the surrounding plates. They find that the angle of collision creates compartmentalised zones of high and low strain rate around a region of strong vorticity, and … Read more…
