An ocean research cruise led by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics is off the coast of Florida surveying the tectonics and movement of the crust hundreds of feet beneath the ocean floor. Follow the expedition’s blog as they look for clues to the break-up of Earth’s last supercontinent Pangea, and how that massive… Continue Reading Field Blog: Studying the Blake Plateau
Study Explores How Tectonic Forces Shape The Andes
Based on their shared geologic history, one would expect the topography of the Andes mountains to be relatively consistent from one end to the other. But reality defies expectation: the 8,000-kilometer long mountain belt spectacularly widens and narrows (varying from 300 to 900 km in width) as it winds from north to south along the… Continue Reading Study Explores How Tectonic Forces Shape The Andes
New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate
The North American plate is a medley of geological parts that protrude into Earth’s mantle like tree branches frozen into the surface of an iced-over lake. Research from The University of Texas at Austin has proposed a new method to map these ‘frozen-in’ layers of the tectonic plate and reveal how it interacts with the… Continue Reading New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate
New NSF Grant Awarded to Study Earth’s “Flat Slabs”
A $2.7 million multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional NSF-Frontiers of Earth Science grant has been awarded to a team led by Carnegie’s Lara Wagner to study an active flat slab in Colombia. A flat slab is produced when a tectonic plate descends to depths of about 30 to 60 miles (~50-100 km) then flattens and travels horizontally for… Continue Reading New NSF Grant Awarded to Study Earth’s “Flat Slabs”
From The Field: Final Update From SISIE
UTIG researchers and students Sean Gulick, Harm Van Avendonk, Brandon Shuck, Dominik Kardell, Steffen Saustrup, Marcy Davis and Dan Duncan just returned from their time aboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth off the coast of New Zealand working on the South Island Subduction Initiation Experiment (SISIE). They sent us this update on their final two… Continue Reading From The Field: Final Update From SISIE