Journal
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SOLID EARTH
Volume 115, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2009JB006422
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [EAR-0607831]
- CIRES Graduate Student Research
- Department of Geological Sciences
- NERC [come20001] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/C004574/1, earth010007, come20001] Funding Source: researchfish
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Thinning of mantle lithosphere due to Rayleigh-Taylor instability can be a mechanism for triggering continental magmatism near active or recently active plate boundaries. We consider whether it is also plausible as a mechanism for intracontinental magmatism, several hundred kilometers from active subduction or rifting. We perform two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor experiments and find that a shear stress-free top and non-Newtonian flow permit two types of instability to develop, largely dependent on how the viscosity coefficient varies with depth. For small variation with depth, with the e-folding depth scale (the interval across which the coefficient changes by a factor of e) greater than a third to a half of the thickness of the unstable layer, deformation concentrates at the ends of the layer in localized thinning and thickening zones; the middle part moves horizontally toward the region of thickening as a coherent block undergoing minimal strain. When the viscosity coefficient decreases more rapidly with depth, thinning of the layer is distributed laterally over a wide zone. Between the regions of thickening and thinning, shear strain and vertical gradients in horizontal velocity prevent this area from moving as a coherent block. The rheological exponent, n, that relates strain rate to stress in the constitutive equation controls the degree of localization of the downwelling and upwelling: the width varies as approximate to n(-1/2). In intraplate settings where a shear stress-free top condition could be applicable, high-stress crystalline plasticity could provide a mechanism for the narrow zones of thinning and upwelling, which would facilitate decompression related volcanism.
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