The effects of bathymetry on the long-term carbon cycle and CCD.

The shape of the ocean floor (bathymetry) and the overlaying sediments provide the largest carbon sink throughout Earth's history, supporting ~one to two orders of magnitude more carbon storage than the oceans and atmosphere combined. While accumulation and erosion of these sediments are bathymetry dependent (e.g.

On the relative temperatures of Earth's volcanic hotspots and mid-ocean ridges.

Volcanic hotspots are thought to be fed by hot, active upwellings from the deep mantle, with excess temperatures () ~100° to 300°C higher than those of mid-ocean ridges. However, estimates are limited in geographical coverage and often inconsistent for individual hotspots. We infer the temperature of oceanic hotspots and ridges simultaneously by converting seismic velocity to temperature.

Oceanic plateau of the Hawaiian mantle plume head subducted to the uppermost lower mantle.

The Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain that includes the Hawaiian volcanoes was created by the Hawaiian mantle plume. Although the mantle plume hypothesis predicts an oceanic plateau produced by massive decompression melting during the initiation stage of the Hawaiian hot spot, the fate of this plateau is unclear. We discovered a megameter-scale portion of thickened oceanic crust in the uppermost lower mantle west of the Sea of Okhotsk by stacking seismic waveforms of precursors.

Extrinsic Elastic Anisotropy in a Compositionally Heterogeneous Earth's Mantle.

Several theoretical studies indicate that a substantial fraction of the measured seismic anisotropy could be interpreted as extrinsic anisotropy associated with compositional layering in rocks, reducing the significance of strain-induced intrinsic anisotropy. Here we quantify the potential contribution of grain-scale and rock-scale compositional anisotropy to the observations by (i) combining effective medium theories with realistic estimates of mineral isotropic elastic properties and (ii) measuring velocities of synthetic seismic waves propagating through modeled strain-induced microstructures. It is shown that for typical mantle and oceanic crust subsolidus compositions, rock-scale compositional layering does not generate any substantial extrinsic anisotropy (<1%) because of the limited contrast in isotropic elastic moduli among different rocks.

Viscosity jump in Earth's mid-mantle.

The viscosity structure of Earth's deep mantle affects the thermal evolution of Earth, the ascent of mantle plumes, settling of subducted oceanic lithosphere, and the mixing of compositional heterogeneities in the mantle. Based on a reanalysis of the long-wavelength nonhydrostatic geoid, we infer viscous layering of the mantle using a method that allows us to avoid a priori assumptions about its variation with depth. We detect an increase in viscosity at 800- to 1200-kilometers depth, far greater than the depth of the mineral phase transformations that define the mantle transition zone.

How mantle slabs drive plate tectonics.

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.