Plate motions, crustal and lithospheric mobility, and paleomagnetism: Prospective viewpoint

Abstract

The shift in viewpoint from a static to a mobilistic solid Earth, as brought about by paleomagnetism, opened many new directions of research that continue to be exciting today and hold prospects for an exciting future. Here five topics of current research on Earth's mobilistic surface are reviewed and their future directions discussed. First, dividing Earth's solid surface into two domains, (1) nearly rigid plate interiors and (2) plate boundaries, some of them very wide, leads to a review and discussion of the kinematics of wide plate boundaries. Many more adjustable parameters will be needed to describe the complex kinematics of plate boundaries, which cover ∼15% of Earth surface, than the few dozen parameters needed to describe the kinematics of plate interiors, which cover ∼85% of Earth's surface. Second, the question of the degree of rigidity of plate interiors is discussed. The integral of the velocity gradient across plates interiors is at least a few hundredths or tenths of millimeters per year and in several well‐determined cases less than 2 or 3 mm/yr. Future investigations will no doubt be aimed at narrowing these limits and to expanding the area of Earth's surface over which limits are known. Third, space geodetic data, mainly from very long baseline inter‐ferometry, satellite laser ranging, and the Global Positioning System, have demonstrated a remarkable similarity of velocities of stable plate interiors averaged over a few to a dozen years with plate velocities averaged over a few million years. Already, however, significant differences of a few millimeters per year are emerging, and the tectonic and dynamic significance of these differences need to be evaluated. Fourth, despite more than two decades of investigation, the question of how fast hotspots move relative to one another is still a contentious issue. One group of researchers maintains that maximum speeds are 3 mm/yr, whereas another maintains that speeds are 10–20 mm/yr or more. The differences cannot be reconciled until the uncertainties in plate reconstructions relative to hotspots are systematically and properly incorporated into analyses of hotspot motion. Fifth, paleomagnetists have estimated true polar wander over the past 200 Myr by equating it with the apparent polar wander of hotspots. However, the possible motion among hotspots and the neglect of the uncertainties in reconstructions relative to the hotspots have left these analyses unconvincing. Further progress requires the incorporation of these uncertainties. A possible exception is the apparent polar wander of the hotspots over the past ∼10–20 Myr or less, which requires only small adjustments for plate motion and has presumably smaller uncertainties due to plate reconstructions. The cause of this apparently significant, geologically recent shift of the pole is poorly understood. Compared with the rate and direction of the secular shift of the pole observed this century from the International Latitude Service and for 1976 to 1994 from space geodetic data, the paleomagnetically observed shift is unlikely to be due to the removal of northern hemisphere midlatitude ice sheets, which is the commonly accepted explanation for the shift observed over the past century. I speculate instead that the apparently rapid uplift of the Tibetan Plateau sometime during the past ∼10–20 Myr is at least partly responsible for the geologically recent shift of the pole. Finally, I conclude that the theory of plate tectonics has provided a framework that leads naturally to further quantification of the kinematics and deformation of Earth's solid surface chiefly because of the key assumption of the rigidity of plate interiors, which permits specific predictions to be made. This revolution in quantification still has far to go and holds exciting prospects for future tectonic studies.