How Mantle Slabs Drive Plate Tectonics
Abstract
The gravitational pull of subducted slabs is thought to drive the motions of Earth's tectonic plates, but the coupling between slabs and plates is not well established. If a slab is mechanically attached to a subducting plate, it can exert a direct pull on the plate. Alternatively, a detached slab may drive a plate by exciting flow in the mantle that exerts a shear traction on the base of the plate. From the geologic history of subduction, we estimated the relative importance of “pull” versus “suction” for the present-day plates. Observed plate motions are best predicted if slabs in the upper mantle are attached to plates and generate slab pull forces that account for about half of the total driving force on plates. Slabs in the lower mantle are supported by viscous mantle forces and drive plates through slab suction.
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Supported by a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (C.L.-B.). We thank two anonymous reviewers for comments.
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Published In
Science
Volume 298 | Issue 5591
4 October 2002
4 October 2002
Submission history
Received: 20 May 2002
Accepted: 3 September 2002
Published in print: 4 October 2002
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- Clinton P. Conrad,
- Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni
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Cited by
- Fine-Scale Modeling of Global Plate Tectonics, Science, 329, 5995, (1020-1021), (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.1194858
- The Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Flow: From Local to Global Scales, Science, 329, 5995, (1033-1038), (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.1191223
- Seismological evidence for the earliest global subduction network at 2 Ga ago, Science Advances, 6, 32, (2020)./doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc5491
- What drives tectonic plates?, Science Advances, 5, 10, (2019)./doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax4295
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