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Tectonics is the study of the structural geology of the Earth and other planetary bodies, and the local and regional processes that created that rock geometry. This includes the movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates that result in the creation, destruction and rearrangement of the Earth’s crust and lithosphere.
New experiments shed light on the complex interplay between rock deformation and metamorphism. Slab stagnation in Earth’s mantle transition zone may be explained by transient weakening during the olivine–spinel phase transition.
The mantle upwelling beneath the Afar rift may be influenced by tectonic processes in the overriding lithospheric plates that shape the distribution of both the compositional heterogeneities and abundance of melt, according to a geochemical and statistical study of volcanic samples.
Mantle flow induced by slab detachment plays a key role in regulating plate convergence, with spreading ridges and continent-trench collisions causing significant tectonic uplift and acceleration of plate motion, according to numerical modelling of lithosphere-mantle dynamics.
Analysis of ground motion velocity measurements recorded close to the Narli splay fault indicates an early transition to supershear rupture during the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake.
A 60 million-year cyclic fluctuation in biotic extinction and diversity in the Phanerozoic suggests a response to biogeochemical redox cycling in shallow marine habitats paced by global tectonic processes, according to time-series analysis and correlation of empirical and model datasets of Earth’s interior and surficial processes.
New experiments shed light on the complex interplay between rock deformation and metamorphism. Slab stagnation in Earth’s mantle transition zone may be explained by transient weakening during the olivine–spinel phase transition.
Continued ground uplift long after the drying out of the Aral Sea demonstrates that human activity can provoke a response deep inside our planet, in this case by causing rock in Earth’s mantle to flow.
The formation of porphyry copper deposits in regions of thickened continental crust remains enigmatic. Insights from the Laramide Porphyry Province in Arizona suggest a link between shallow-slab subduction and copper mineralization.
