Dynamic Earth: Plates, Plumes and Mantle Convection

Dynamic Earth clearly details the mechanisms responsible for plate tectonics, volcanic hotspots, and many resulting geological processes. Starting from basic principles, coverage provides a fundamental exploration into the principles of convection in the earth's mantle, summarizes key observations and presents all the relevant physics. The book begins with a brief history of the key ideas leading into mantle convection, covering more than 200 years of geological thought. It concludes with surveys of geochemical contraints on mantle evolution and the thermal evolution of the mantle, with implications for changes in the surface tectonic regime. Main concepts and arguments are presented with a minimum of mathematics. For the reader who desires fuller coverage, more mathematical versions of important aspects are also included. This book will be of interest to a broad range of geologists who desire a better understanding of the earth's internal dynamics. Graduate students and researchers working on the many aspects of mantle dynamics and its implications for geological processes will find it particularly useful. It is also suitable as a text for upper undergraduate and postgraduate courses in geophysics, geochemistry, and tectonics.