Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American Plate Motion Change

Stotz, Ingo L.; Vilacis, Berta; Hayek, Jorge N.; Bunge, Hans-Peter und Friedrich, Anke M. (2021): Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American Plate Motion Change. In: Geophysical Research Letters, Bd. 48, Nr. 18, e2021GL095079

Abstract

Plate motion changes provide powerful constrains on plate tectonic forces. North America is ideal to explore these forces. We use recently published high-temporal resolution plate reconstructions of North America, which reveal a velocity slow-down at similar to 17 Ma, roughly coeval with the eruption of the Yellowstone plume, together with a stratigraphic analysis of hiatus surfaces across the continent, which provides proxy information for paleotopography. Using a simple Couette/Poiseuille flow models we estimate asthenosphere flow beneath North America and its impact on Neogene plate motion. We find that North America's Neogene plate motion change can be explained by Poiseuille flow in the asthenosphere generated upon the arrival of the Yellowstone plume and that the flow length-scale matches the extent of hiatus surfaces. While plume driven upper mantle flow constitutes a geodynamically viable model to explain North America's Neogene plate motion change it provides an intrinsic link between vertical and horizontal plate motions.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Geowissenschaften > Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 550 Geowissenschaften, Geologie
• ISSN: 0094-8276
• Sprache: Englisch