On the relative motions of long-lived Pacific mantle plumes

Kevin Konrad (), Anthony A. P. Koppers, Bernhard Steinberger, Valerie A. Finlayson, Jasper G. Konter and Matthew G. Jackson
Additional contact information
Kevin Konrad: Oregon State University
Anthony A. P. Koppers: Oregon State University
Bernhard Steinberger: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
Valerie A. Finlayson: University of Hawaii Manoa
Jasper G. Konter: University of Hawaii Manoa
Matthew G. Jackson: UC Santa Barbara

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Mantle plumes upwelling beneath moving tectonic plates generate age-progressive chains of volcanos (hotspot chains) used to reconstruct plate motion. However, these hotspots appear to move relative to each other, implying that plumes are not laterally fixed. The lack of age constraints on long-lived, coeval hotspot chains hinders attempts to reconstruct plate motion and quantify relative plume motions. Here we provide 40Ar/39Ar ages for a newly identified long-lived mantle plume, which formed the Rurutu hotspot chain. By comparing the inter-hotspot distances between three Pacific hotspots, we show that Hawaii is unique in its strong, rapid southward motion from 60 to 50 Myrs ago, consistent with paleomagnetic observations. Conversely, the Rurutu and Louisville chains show little motion. Current geodynamic plume motion models can reproduce the first-order motions for these plumes, but only when each plume is rooted in the lowermost mantle.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03277-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-03277-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03277-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().