Reply to comment from Bruce Buffett on "Evolution of the slab bending radius and the bending dissipation in three-dimensional subduction models with a variable slab to upper mantle viscosity ratio"

Abstract

In a recent paper ( Schellart, 2009) I present laboratory experiments of progressive subduction in the upper mantle to investigate the evolution of the bending radius and to quantify the bending dissipation. Bruce Buffett provides three main comments on this paper ( Buffett, 2010), and in particular argues that thick plates have a larger fractional bending dissipation than relatively thin plates. Here I respond to these three main comments and present new results from a thick-plate subduction experiment. This experiment shows a low bending dissipation fraction at the subduction zone hinge (0-14%), comparable to the experimental results from Schellart (2009) using relatively thin plates. The fractional bending dissipation for the thick-plate experiment remains low because it adopts a relatively large bending radius at the hinge compared to the thin-plate experiments presented in Schellart (2009).