Journal of Geodynamics最新文献

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has revealed spatiotemporal mass changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, GRACE data must be corrected for the gravity changes due to glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Here we investigate the sensitivity of GIA-induced gravity changes in Antarctica to the lithospheric thickness and upper mantle viscosity using a one-dimensional (1-D) model that assumes a radially varying Earth structure. The sensitivity is assessed using several Antarctic ice-history models that have been widely used to correct GRACE data. The results indicate a trade-off between lithospheric thickness and upper mantle viscosity in evaluating the Antarctic GIA correction. This trade-off exists for all ice-history models; however, the reason for the trade-off differs among models. Furthermore, since there is a sharp contrast in the Earth structure between West and East Antarctica, the adopted ice histories are separated into West and East Antarctic components to examine their contributions to the Antarctic GIA correction. We consider 1-D Earth structures that are averaged from the seismically derived three-dimensional Earth structure for West and East Antarctica. These results indicate that the contributions of the East and West Antarctic loads do not significantly affect the GIA corrections for the West and East Antarctic regions, respectively, and that the trade-off between lithospheric thickness and upper mantle viscosity results in minimal divergence in the assessment of the Antarctic GIA correction between the averaged Earth models of West and East Antarctica. Therefore, the contrast in Earth structure beneath Antarctica may have a limited effect on the ice-mass change estimates for the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The areas of the present study in eastern Serbia, the Danubicum and the Timok Magmatic Complex (TMC, part of the Geticum) are situated between the Vardar Zone and Moesia. The first is Moesia derived and thrust over the Geticum during the latest Cretaceous, the second represents the central segment of the subduction related Apuseni-Banat-Timok-Srednogorie (ABTS) metallogenic belt. The new results, based on 18 geographically distributed sampling points (228 field oriented drill cores) imply large CW vertical axis rotations for the Upper Jurassic (Lower Cretaceous) carbonates of the Danubicum and a moderate one for the Upper Cretaceous igneous and sedimentary rocks from the TMC. These, together with earlier published paleomagnetic data provide kinematic constraints to test the circum-Moesian backarc-convex orocline model. The strike test plot clearly documents that it is a progressive arc. The starting situation at the time of the volcanic activity in the metallic belt (90–70 Ma) must have been a generally E-W oriented S segment, continuing in NNW-SSE oriented ABT segments. The present geometry of the circum-Moesian belt, in the context of Miocene paleomagnetic results from the Vardar Zone and the Apuseni Mts, is interpreted as the result of two main tectonic processes. The first is an about 30° vertical axis CW rotation which took place in coordination with the Vardar Zone (20–17 Ma). The second is an additional 40–65° CW rotation (17–15 Ma) involving also the Danubicum, due to the subduction pull of the E Carpathians in combination with the corner effect of Moesia.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission provides uniquely high-precision observations for monitoring ocean mass changes (OMC), allowing for the establishment and evaluation of the ocean mass budget in conjunction with satellite altimetry and temperature and salinity observations. However, it is challenging to perform OMC closed-loop validation in the East China Sea (ECS) due to potential biases in the individual model and the lack of certain data processing. In this study, we comprehensively analyze the ocean mass budget in the ECS during the GRACE era (2005–2015) by utilizing multiple datasets, mainly consisting of three official GRACE RL06 solutions, three altimetry products, and four ocean reanalysis products. The effect of ocean bottom deformation, neglected in previous studies, is −0.38 ± 0.06 mm/yr, and we estimate a more accurate ensemble sea level change to be 4.05 ± 1.50 mm/yr in the ECS from the altimetry products. There are discrepancies between leakage-corrected GRACE OMC observations and steric-corrected altimeter OMC estimations in both the seasonal signals and the long-term trends (e.g., 6.25 mm/yr vs. 4.22 mm/yr). These discrepancies are strongly correlated with sediment runoff from the Yangtze River and in-situ sediment observations, suggesting that ocean sediment accumulation should be considered in the ocean mass budget in the ECS. Since in-situ sediment data are estimated over ∼100 years, we employ an empirical estimation method to determine the corresponding data during the period 2005–2015, to avoid potential biases caused by inconsistencies in observational timespans. The results show that sediment mass changes can explain about 96 % of residual trends. Our results emphasize the significant impact of sediment on improving the ocean mass budget in the ECS, offering a novel perspective for estimating ocean mass changes in other coastal regions.

Recent progress on the study of olivine LPO after (Karato et al., 2008) is reviewed with the emphasis on three issues: (i) LPO formed by the rotation of olivine crystals with anisotropic shape (euhedral crystals) in diffusion creep (Miyazaki et al., 2013), (ii) B-type LPO in the olivine + basaltic melt (Holtzman et al., 2003), and (iii) pressure change in the influence of LPO (Ohuchi and Irifune, 2013). Regarding the role of euhedral crystals, we show that euhedral olivine crystals occur in a mixture of forsterite and diopside (used by (Miyazaki et al., 2013)) but not in a mixture of olivine and enstatite. Consequently, the results by reported by (Miyazaki et al., 2013) are not applicable to the Earth’s upper mantle where olivine co-exists mostly with enstatite. Also we show that the LPO reported by (Miyazaki et al., 2013) is not consistent with the shape of olivine, and the observed LPO is likely due to dislocation glide (A-type fabric) under the conditions near the diffusion-dislocation creep regime boundary.

Regarding the LPO of olivine with the presence of melt, (Qi et al., 2018)’s experimental study with the torsion geometry did not reproduce the B-type fabric reported by (Holtzman et al., 2003) indicating that the B-type fabric reported by (Holtzman et al., 2003) was indeed an artifact of the direct shear experiments. The weak LPO found by (Qi et al., 2018) (compared to that by (Zimmerman et al., 1999)) can be explained by the smaller grain size in their experiments. I conclude that a majority of the experimental results on olivine LPO at relatively low pressures (<2 GPa) can be understood based on the basics of deformation mechanism map and LPO caused by various slip systems in olivine. Regarding a claim by (Ohuchi and Irifune, 2013) that the A-type LPO (a-slip) dominates at high water content and c-slip dominates at low water content at pressures higher than ∼7 GPa, a compilation of experimental studies by (Masuti et al., 2019) and the observed LPO of the ultra-deep xenolith do not support their claim. However, experimental studies under these high-pressure conditions are limited and there remain large uncertainties regarding the LPO at high pressures (P>3 GPa).