Collaborative Research: Characterizing and Modeling Crustal Recycling

Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA

Investigators

Abstract

Recycling of Earth's crust back down into the deep Earth has been invoked to explain a wide variety of Earth processes, including changes in the forces that move tectonic plates, and how the thickness and composition of Earth's crust evolved. All of these processes take place at depths inaccessible to humans. A volcanic eruption in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan has brought to light pieces of rock from 90 km deep in Earth that can be used to test recycling-related hypotheses. This project will provide training and research opportunities for graduate student Madeline Shaffer and several undergraduate students. Visits to local elementary schools will expose potential future scientists to Earth science. Continued development of the laser-ablation split-stream technique will benefit the broad range of visitors to their laboratory. This collaborative US-Tajik-Romanian project has a two-pronged approach: 1) Laboratory geochronology and petrology that will constrain the timescale of recycling, and the compositions, densities and wavespeeds of the recycling materials. With some assumptions about protolith composition, the evolution in these physical properties can be calculated. 2) Geodynamic modeling of recycling crustal sections with different compositions and layers in different thermal gradients. The models will yield the calculated evolution of the physical properties of recycling crust and determine the types of crustal sections that may recycle. Because the Pamir-Tibetan Plateau is an archetypal continent-continent collision, ideas developed there can be applied globally.