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Spreading continents kick-started plate tectonics

Nature volume 513, pages 405–408 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Stresses acting on cold, thick and negatively buoyant oceanic lithosphere are thought to be crucial to the initiation of subduction and the operation of plate tectonics1,2, which characterizes the present-day geodynamics of the Earth. Because the Earth’s interior was hotter in the Archaean eon, the oceanic crust may have been thicker, thereby making the oceanic lithosphere more buoyant than at present3, and whether subduction and plate tectonics occurred during this time is ambiguous, both in the geological record and in geodynamic models4. Here we show that because the oceanic crust was thick and buoyant5, early continents may have produced intra-lithospheric gravitational stresses large enough to drive their gravitational spreading, to initiate subduction at their margins and to trigger episodes of subduction. Our model predicts the co-occurrence of deep to progressively shallower mafic volcanics and arc magmatism within continents in a self-consistent geodynamic framework, explaining the enigmatic multimodal volcanism and tectonic record of Archaean cratons6. Moreover, our model predicts a petrological stratification and tectonic structure of the sub-continental lithospheric mantle, two predictions that are consistent with xenolith5 and seismic studies, respectively, and consistent with the existence of a mid-lithospheric seismic discontinuity7. The slow gravitational collapse of early continents could have kick-started transient episodes of plate tectonics until, as the Earth’s interior cooled and oceanic lithosphere became heavier, plate tectonics became self-sustaining.

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Figure 1: Numerical solution of an example of continent collapse leading to subduction.
Figure 2: Development of layering of the continental lithosphere through thinning and progressive accretion of moderately depleted mantle.
Figure 3: Proposed model for the co-evolution of cratonic crust and sub-continental lithospheric mantle.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. L. Griffin for comments on the manuscript. P.F.R. acknowledges the assistance of resources provided at the NCI National Facility systems at the Australian National University through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme supported by the Australian Government. N.C. was supported by the Institut Universitaire de France, and the European Research Council (ERC) within the framework of the SP2-Ideas Program ERC-2013-CoG, under ERC grant agreement no. 617588. N.C. acknowledges discussions with B. Romanowicz and B. Tauzin. N.F. was supported by Statoil ASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earthbyte Research Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia,

    Patrice F. Rey & Nicolas Flament

  2. Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, UMR 5276 CNRS, Université Lyon 1, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France,

    Nicolas Coltice

  3. Institut Universitaire de France, 75005 Paris, France,

    Nicolas Coltice

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  1. Patrice F. Rey
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Contributions

P.F.R. conceived the study. P.F.R. and N.C. performed numerical experiments. P.F.R., N.C. and N.F. interpreted the results. P.F.R., N.C. and N.F. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Patrice F. Rey.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Gravitational force between continent and oceanic lid.

a, Depth profile of the difference in lithostatic pressure σzz between an oceanic lid 150 km thick and a continent (1) 150 km thick, (2) 200 km thick and (3) 250 km thick. The vertical integration of the lithostatic pressure difference (Δσzz) is the resulting gravitational force Fg acting between the Archaean continent and the adjacent lithospheric lid. In all cases, this force is >7 × 1013 N m−1, comparable to or larger than the present-day tectonic forces driving orogenesis1. b, Reference density structure of the continent and oceanic lithosphere (densities of depleted and fertile mantle are from ref. 5). All densities vary with temperature with a coefficient of thermal expansion α = 3 × 10−5 K−1. We assume a linear geotherm in the oceanic plate (T(z = 0) = 293 K, T(z = 150 km) = 1,820 K) above a convective mantle with an average temperature of 1,820 K.

Extended Data Figure 2 Stagnant-lid convection model before lateral averaging and introduction of a continent.

The temperature field in our experiments derives from the lateral averaging of an experiment in which the mantle is allowed to convect under constant upper-boundary temperatures (293 K) and internal production of radiogenic heat (1.36 × 10−8 W m−3). The thermal expansion is 3 × 10−5 K−1, the thermal diffusivity is 0.9 × 10−6 m2 s−1, the heat capacity is 1,000 J kg−1 K−1, and the Rayleigh number of the convecting mantle is between 106 and 107. The snapshot shows the temperature field after ∼1 Gyr of evolution. In this experiment, a lid develops and remains stagnant. Conductive cooling and the formation of cold drips from the lower, unstable part of the stagnant lid balance each other out to maintain the thickness of the stagnant lid. In the lid, the conductive geotherm is such that a temperature of 1,620 K is reached at ∼100 km depth, and 1,820 K (the average temperature in the convecting mantle) is reached at ∼150 km depth.

Extended Data Figure 3 Numerical solutions for various models showing contrasting tectonic evolutions.

A, In this experiment, all parameters are as in Fig. 1 except the continent half-width, which is 500 km. In the case of stable continental collapse, cold drips form faster than subduction can initiate, which stabilizes the oceanic lid. a, Initial state. b, During and after spreading and thinning of the continent, a layer of mostly fertile mantle is accreted at the base of the continent through cooling. B, This experiment is in all aspects similar to that presented in Fig. 1 except for the oceanic lid, which includes 75 km of buoyant lithopheric mantle (in purple) with a reference density of 3,365 kg m−3 (that is, 35 kg m−3 less dense than non-depleted mantle rocks). a, b, Homogeneous continental spreading with decompression melting, and the initiation of a slab that stalls underneath a long-lived orogenic wedge. The same experiment with a buoyant mantle lid with a reference density of 3,370 kg m−3 leads to subduction. c, The very base of the oceanic slab is dragged into the asthenosphere. C, In this experiment the limiting yield stress of the strongly depleted continental mantle (in green) is increased to 500 MPa to take into account the possible plastic strengthening of the depleted—and therefore dry—mantle (all other mantle rocks have a limiting yield stress of 300 MPa). Comparison with Fig. 1—which shows the same experiment but with all mantle rocks having a limiting yield stress of 300 MPa—illustrates that a stronger continent deforms in a more heterogeneous manner. After an episode of spreading, thinning and subduction initiation (b), strain localization and rifting divide the continent in two as the slab detaches (c) before stabilization and cooling (d). D, In this experiment, the continent has a half width of 600 km (a), and all mantle rocks have a limiting yield stress of 200 MPa. b–d, Continental rifting, recurrent slab detachment and trench-retreat occur, and two continental blocks move away from each other with little internal deformation. e, f, Rifting and subduction stop, while cooling re-establishes a stagnant lid. In all cases, a protracted phase of decompression melting lasting several tens of millions of years is coeval with spreading and rifting.

Extended Data Figure 4 Tectonic phase diagram: subduction versus stable-lid regime as a function of yield stress and continent width.

Two series of calculations were performed (with continental thicknesses of 175 and 225 km), systematically varying the half-width of the continent (from 400 to 1,200 km) and the limiting yield stress of all mantle rocks (from 100 to 500 MPa). Depending on the competition between the gravitational driving power of the buoyant continent and the combined viscous resistance of the continent and oceanic lid, the continental collapse may or may not lead to the subduction of the oceanic lid under the continental margin. Coloured dots and the continuous black thick line represent the outcomes of numerical experiments for the 175-km-thick continent. The thick dashed line separates the stable-lid domain from the subduction domain in the case of the 225-km-thick continent. The arrow illustrates that continental rifting, because it reduces the half-width of continents, stabilizes Archaean oceanic lids.

Extended Data Table 1 Thermal and mechanical parameters
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Rey, P., Coltice, N. & Flament, N. Spreading continents kick-started plate tectonics. Nature 513, 405–408 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13728

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