Rejuvenation of the lithosphere by the Hawaiian plume

Li, Xueqing; Kind, Rainer; Yuan, Xiaohui; Wölbern, I.; Hanka, Winfried

doi:10.1038/nature02349

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Rejuvenation of the lithosphere by the Hawaiian plume

Authors

/persons/resource/li

Li, Xueqing
2.1 Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes , 2.0 Physics of the Earth, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;
2.4 Seismology, 2.0 Physics of the Earth, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;
GEOFON, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

/persons/resource/kind

Kind, Rainer
2.4 Seismology, 2.0 Physics of the Earth, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;
GEOFON, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

/persons/resource/yuan

Yuan, Xiaohui
2.4 Seismology, 2.0 Physics of the Earth, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;
GEOFON, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

Wölbern, I.
External Organizations;
GEOFON, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

/persons/resource/hanka

Hanka, Winfried
2.4 Seismology, 2.0 Physics of the Earth, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;
GEOFON, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

External Ressource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (public)

4872.pdf
(Any fulltext), 253KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Li, X., Kind, R., Yuan, X., Wölbern, I., Hanka, W. (2004): Rejuvenation of the lithosphere by the Hawaiian plume. - Nature, 427, 6977, 827-829.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02349

Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_230611

Abstract

The volcanism responsible for creating the chain of the Hawaiian islands and seamounts is believed to mark the passage of the oceanic lithosphere over a mantle plume1,2. In this picture hot material rises from great depth within a fixed narrow conduit to the surface, penetrating the moving lithosphere3. Although a number of models describe possible plume–lithosphere interactions4, seismic imaging techniques have not had sufficient resolution to distinguish between them. Here we apply the S-wave ‘receiver function’ technique to data of three permanent seismic broadband stations on the Hawaiian islands, to map the thickness of the underlying lithosphere. We find that under Big Island the lithosphere is 100–110 km thick, as expected for an oceanic plate 90–100 million years old that is not modified by a plume. But the lithosphere thins gradually along the island chain to about 50–60 km below Kauai. The width of the thinning is about 300 km. In this zone, well within the larger-scale topographic swell, we infer that the rejuvenation model5 (where the plume thins the lithosphere) is operative; however, the largerscale topographic swell is probably supported dynamically.