Earth Sciences 1089F/G Final: Lecture Notes for Final Exam

• School: Western University
• Department: Earth Sciences
• Course: Earth Sciences 1089F/G
• Professor: Cameron Tsujita

Document Summary

Earth"s changing face: the basics of plate tectonics lecture. Heat plumes and convection: heat flow within the earth is not uniform. All material in the mesosphere (lower part of mantle) can flow to some degree, despite being solid: hot material flows upward in plumes (heat rises, cold material flows downward. This produces huge convection currents in the mesosphere: crucial in the delivery of heat to shallower layers of the earth. Asthenosphere and lithosphere: of all material in the mantle, the asthenosphere flows the most readily. There are likely smaller convection cells within the larger-scale convection patterns of the mantle as a whole. Mechanics of plate tectonics: the lithosphere is not a continuous sheet, but rather is crust broken into plates these floating plates shift and interact with one another, convection model. Convection currents in the asthenosphere drag the lithospheric plates along: ridge-push model.