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Rapid subduction initiation and magmatism in the Western Pacific driven by internal vertical forces
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Rapid subduction initiation and magmatism in the Western Pacific driven by internal vertical forces

B Maunder, J Prytulak, S Goes and M Reagan
Nature communications, Vol.11(1), pp.1874-1874
04/20/2020
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15737-4
PMCID: PMC7170853
PMID: 32312969
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15737-4View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Plate tectonics requires the formation of plate boundaries. Particularly important is the enigmatic initiation of subduction: the sliding of one plate below the other, and the primary driver of plate tectonics. A continuous, in situ record of subduction initiation was recovered by the International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 352, which drilled a segment of the fore-arc of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana subduction system, revealing a distinct magmatic progression with a rapid timescale (approximately 1 million years). Here, using numerical models, we demonstrate that these observations cannot be produced by previously proposed horizontal external forcing. Instead a geodynamic evolution that is dominated by internal, vertical forces produces both the temporal and spatial distribution of magmatic products, and progresses to self-sustained subduction. Such a primarily internally driven initiation event is necessarily whole-plate scale and the rock sequence generated (also found along the Tethyan margin) may be considered as a smoking gun for this type of event.

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