Balancing the force budget of plate tectonics along the Nazca, South America plate margin [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Giampiero Iaffaldano

Balancing the force budget of plate tectonics along the Nazca/South America plate margin Dissertation der Fakultät für Geowissenschaften der Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München Vorgelegt von Giampiero Iaffaldano am 10.09.2007 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Bunge Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Stuart Gilder Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 06/12/2007 Table of contents Introduction pag. 3 Chapter 1 pag. 12 Chapter 2 pag. 35 Chapter 3 pag. 61 Conclusions pag. 84 Lebenslauf pag. 85 Introduction Understanding the dynamics of global plate motion is one of the most important problems in geophysics today. Mantle convection is commonly accepted as the driving force for plates but, while the kinematics of plate movement is well known from geodetic and paleomagnetic observations, we still lack a rigorous description of the coupled mantle convection-plate motion system. Over the past 10 years there has been much progress in developing and exploring computational high-resolution 3D mantle convection models. These geodynamic earth models solve the conservation equations (mass, momentum, energy) for a highly viscous (Stokes) fluid. The use of local finite elements in some of these models allows one furthermore to make use of modern parallel computers.