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

Maunder, B.; Prytulak, J.; Goes, S.; Reagan, M.

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Authors

B. Maunder

S. Goes

M. Reagan



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.

Citation

Maunder, B., Prytulak, J., Goes, S., & Reagan, M. (2020). Rapid subduction initiation and magmatism in the Western Pacific driven by internal vertical forces. Nature Communications, 11(1), Article 1874. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15737-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 12, 2020
Online Publication Date Apr 20, 2020
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date Apr 21, 2020
Publicly Available Date Apr 21, 2020
Journal Nature Communications
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 11
Issue 1
Article Number 1874
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15737-4

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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