Earth’s Deep Interior

●​ Effect of Earthquakes depend on severity as well as geographical location

Seismic Wave:

●​ Wave of energy
●​ Transference of energy during an earthquake

Some terminology

Focus = where earthquake actually happens

Epicentre = energy that hits the surface is the highest, as energy radiates from this point
outwards(point just above )

There is motion on the fault → fault scarp(landscape shows motion has occurred)

Fault trace → line across the land that shows where fault comes to surface

Geothermal gradient: gradient in temperature in earth, makes rocks soft(ductile)

Ductile Shear Zone:

●​ Less likely have to rift spots, don’t cause earthquakes
●​ Locked up layer closer to surface
●​ Instead of breaking along the fault line, get ductile deformation

Seismogenic layer → layer prone to release seismic energy

Aseismic Energy → most faulting happens this way, no measurable release of seismic energy

Worldwide system to detect earthquakes first during 1960s

(to detect release of seismic energy)
(want to know the nuclear tests, to monitor the earthquakes)

United Plates of Planet Earth: Tuzo Wilson 1968

Focus: how deep an earthquake is happening(describes the depth of a earthquake
underground)

Divergent Boundaries have typically shallow focus earthquakes

Subduction zones, where earthquakes deep underground , sometimes up to make 800 km

At subduction zones, earthquakes happen in the descending slab until it gets too warm to
rupture (top 50 km )

●​ Trenches are due to bending down of the volcanoes,

●​ As oceanic crust bends downward, driving into mantle, volcanic activity heats up
●​ Crust been contact with ocean water, so starts to dehydrate
●​ As oceanic crust plate into the mantle, water gets released and ends up producing
volcanoes

Astheno → “weak” in greek

Lithosphere, tectonic plates are moving because sitting on a soft layer that allows to move
across the mantle

Oceanic crust is all the water basins

Continental crust more buoyant and dense

So when both converges, oceanic sinks while continental overrides it

Continental formed at subduction zones at volcanoes: rich with felsic(feldspar and silica) give it
light appearance and low density

Ocean crust is “Mafic”(Magnesium and iron(ferric)) so dark colored

Black part is salt and green bits are mantle rocks or ultramafic(more rich)

Continental made out of multiple types of rocks

Ocean most made out of salt

Isostasy: The vertical buoyancy of Earth materials based on their density
Ex: an iceberg floating on water

When crust thickens, it goes into mantle as well

●​ Continental crust does not necessarily end at today’s coastline as it extends past them
underneath continental shelf

●​ Continental crust acts like a blanket preventing heat from the mantle getting to surface

Within the mantle is a lot of heat brought from the core that is hot and radioactive decay that
generates heat as well.

Difficult for heat to transmit from kilometers of continental crust but easier through mid-ocean
ridges where crust is quite thin

By looking at heat distribution, we understand how thick the crust is in those locations

●​ Continental crust has a lot of radiogenic elements than the mantle(continental less
volume) that generate heat particularly where there is old crust and where there is thick
heat

Heat in crust generated by radioactive decay in continental crust, so heat is very released where
thicker of continental crust like andes, himalayas
Also lot of radiogenic heat is produced there, so too much heat there is it becomes ductile,
starts to move and squeeze

Mountain belts: squeeze together and material flows outward along faults, important at
generating earthquakes

Crust sits upon a layer of hard lithosphere mantle

Sort of di-partied tectonic plate

Continental Lithosphere:

Continental Crust(thick but): up to 80 km thick of low density, mostly felsic rocks

Oceanic Lithosphere:
Oceanic crust (thin but)approx 10 km of high density mostly mafic rocks

Upper mantle:

Asthenospheric Mantle: plastic or partially melted(~200km thick)

Generally, under more pressure, molecules become more solid , and as pressure released,
melting

Thickness of mantle, pressure is caused by weight of rock

IF bottom mantle, under alot of mantle weight
If under surface,under weight of crust so less pressure

Because of diff pressure, difference in density of rocks with very top melting and get weakness
between chrystels

Mantle is partially melted under the lithosphere(very rigid)

Lithospheric Mantle: rigid ‘plates’(~100km thick)

Plate Boundaries:

●​ Divergent Plate Boundaries: where plate move apart (e.g., mid-ocean ridges and
continental rifts) produces oceanic crust

●​ Convergent plate boundaries (think density!!):

○​ oceanic crust converging with oceanic or continental crust produces ‘subduction
zones’
○​ continental crust converging with continental produces ‘obduction zones’
 ●​ Transform plate boundaries are where plates slide past each other

The ‘crust’ is the outer layer of relatively silica-rich rocks

Continents VS Plates
●​ Embedded in larger tectonic plates

Active vs Passive Margin:

●​ Active → things happening, faults

●​ Passive → no big faults, just a transition from continental to oceanic crust but not a plate
boundary

How can we prove plates move?

●​ We can show over geologic time scales by looking at island chains in the middle of the
oceans
●​ There are places in the earth with Hot Spots
○​ The plates are sliding, thought stable location(about 50 spots)

Hot Spot Track: Tracking Plate Movement

●​ Hot Spot tracks tell us about plate movement and mantle heterogeneity
●​ Where volcanoes happen because there is additional heat peeking under them
●​ Heat is generated at core mantle boundary shoots up through whole mantle
●​ Causes melting in top oceanic crust, then creates flood basalts like Hawaii
●​ Over time, plates move past these hot spots at expected low velocity relative to plate
motion
●​ Tells us that mantle is not completely homogenous in terms of temperature profile, what
occurs within(mobile or not)
Older as move away from hot spot

More depth drilling if thinner crust, deep drilling only goes as 13 km deep on land and 8 km at
sea because it gets hotter and machinery (as well as pressure against water at sea)

THE WILSON CYCLE

●​ Approximately 500 million years in duration from beginning to end
●​ Last supercontinent was Pangea 250 million years ago
●​ Next one will be Pangea II c. 250 Ma in the future
●​ Oldest supercontinent so far recognized is about 3 billion years old (3 Ga: Giga annum)

JAPAN: ‘EARTHQUAKE NATION’ Where 4 plates meet

During 1891 earthquake, release of seismic energy and actual motion along fault line

Tectonic geomorphology → looking at shapes of landscapes to figure out what tectonic

activities have occurred, and how far and what faults have moved

Big networks of seismic graphs,

Fault crap seen in excavation to expose the fault trace

Measuring size(magnitude) of earthquakes:

●​ Richter Scale: Logarithmic scale (M1 to 10) based on amplitude of deflection on a

seismogram
●​ Moment Magnitude: based on actual energy released along the fault line where an M5
produces 32 more than an M4 and an M6 32 times more than an M5 and 1000 times
more than an M4
○​ Energy released is 32 times greater with each increase in magnitude
Seismograph → a pen on a weight on a spring that magnifies shaking, rotating cylinder of
paper shakes, pen goes up/down and shakes, the bigger the displacement(amplitude) of waves,
the bigger the richter scale.

Logarithmic scale from mag 1 to mag 10, 10 times bigger, but does not tell how much energy
has been released

Seismogram → a telegraph of the seismograph(records waves)

From monitoring earthquakes, the number of them decrease on magnitude(not as large)

Different types of Seismic Waves:

●​ Body waves → transmitted through a material

○​ These waves tend to be informative(don’t feel this one)

●​ Surface waves → shaking at the surface(what is felt)

○​ Up or down(rayleigh wave)
○​ Side-Side(love wave)

●​ Both wave types refract when travelling across an interface, and change velocity
depending on density of the material
Waves tend to dilate further they are from focus
We can use detection of difference between p and s waves and determine how far away from
focus, so if distance is close then close to earthquake, and opposite if longer.

We can use detection as measure of distance(only gives radius)

P-Waves: ‘Primary’ or ‘Compressional’

●​ Faster Vibrations parallel to the axis of motion.
●​ Can travel through liquids
●​ First wave that is generated
●​ Direction of propagation causes vibration in same direction as that(so waves moving in
one direction is causing vibration in same direction)

Triangulation → can measure interval between p and s waves at 3 different stations to draw
three different circles and distance and triangulate epicentre(location) of the earthquake

S-Waves: ‘Shear’ or ‘Secondary’

●​ Slower Vibrations perpendicular to the axis of motion.
●​ Cannot travel through liquids
●​ Vibration through direction perpendicular to propagation more slowly
●​

Seismic reflection → tells about what happens in crust

●​ When energy hits interface bounces back up to the surface, and

“Two-way travel times” based on what we know about how much time it take for a ray to bounce
off of surface, we can tell how deep it is

Lithoprobe: creating our own earthquakes

●​ Vibroseis trucks → dancing elephants

Density of the rocks also affects the velocity of the seismic wave and wave refraction causes
seismic waves to bend as they travel through media of changing density

If seismograph location at a certain point, maybe no p waves at that station

There can be shadow zones for the p-wave on the opposite side of earth where station does not
pick it up

Shadow for s was big and blind to earthquake happening on the other side

Through this observation of shadow zones and understanding properties of refraction, the outer
core must be liquid as determined

The core has to be liquid

P zone shadow showed refraction happening as change of density and another as going from
outer to inner core

●​ Mantle Xenoliths are very rich in olivine and peridotite giving it a green colour
●​ Made of silicate minerals like the crust, these are more enriched in iron and
magnesium(ultramafic)

One way to sample, chunks of mantle come as volcanoes like in hotspot

Chunks of mantle caught during a volcano, xenoliths are those rocks

Meteorites: clues to planetary cores and mantles

Widmanstatten pattern of nickel-iron crystals

NIckel-iron meteorite → composition only formed at only deepest part of planets like earth
●​ Those crystal patterns only under intense high-pressure to tell nature of the core

Earth’s Magnetic Field:

Bc outer core is liquid, Earth has a magnetic field

Bc, iron and nickel in inner core has too much heat to hold a magnetic field

However, when its liquid it convicts in the outer core, the spinning generates this magnetic field

Inner core is solid and outer core is liquid

The Moho: crust-mantle boundary is a seismic discontinuity caused by a change in composition

and density

●​ Marks this discontinuity and below the lithosphere where the velocity of seismic waves
decrease(asthenosphere)

Mohorovicic found a increase in velocity of seismic waves from crust to mantle

Any change is called discontinuity(where wave changes velocity)

●​ In the deep earth, velocity of seismic waves reflects density and state(solid vs liquid)

The deeper, as pressure and density increases, velocity of p and s waves increase(with weird
jumps depend on structure of upper mantle)

●​ Around 3000Km deep, velocity of p waves plumets while s almost 0, bc transition from
solid mantle to liquid outer core
●​ D’’- Layer marks this transition at core outer boundary
○​ The

●​ Close to surface, there is a steep gradient that drops off

○​ Steep caused by loss of heat to space

●​ Temperature profile of mantle shows that it convects

○​ Moves heat from hot core to cold surface(lava lamp)
○​ Mantle convecting

●​ Mantle Plumes:
 ○​ Seismic tomography → shows that the earth's deep interior is more complex than
the “onion skin” model
■​ Hot rock in mantle coming under mid-ocean ridges ultimately releasing
the heat at volcanoes
■​ Very deep in mantle, hot spots in hawaii

●​ Heat transferred from interior of the earth to its surface in a process called mantle
convection
●​ Cold lithospheric plates descend into mantle at subduction zones and pool at
core-mantle boundary
●​ Displaces hot mantle rock in D’’ lawyer which upwells in mantle plumes

●​ Mantle Plumes → hot towers of rock going upward

●​ Slab avalanching → subducting slabs are cold and go downward, sometime sbottom out
at 670 km
●​ Ultra-low velocity zones → zones within the mantle indicate there is hot soft rocks ready
to mobilize and rise
●​ Decompression melting → as you move from high pressure, deep, to low at surface,
create conditions to generate melt and get volcanoes

Module 2:

Chemical and Mechanical Layers of the Earth

●​ Earth’s “crust” is defined based on its composition and refers to relatively silica-rich
low-density rocks that form the thin outer rind of the Earth
●​ Two Types of crust:
○​ Oceanic Crust
○​ Continental Crust
●​ Crust with rigid uppermost layer of the mantle makes up the “lithosphere”

The Crust and the Lithosphere

●​ Crust is defined based on its composition and refers to the relatively silica-rich
low-density rocks that form the thin outer rind of the Earth

Investigating the crust: Geology

 ●​ Geology is primarily concerned with studying rocks exposed at or near the surface
●​ Geologists work in the field and travel world to describe and map rocks
●​ Others work in lab performing experimental work or creating models and map in office
●​ Geologists deal with with practical matters like finding natural resources(petroleum,
natural gas, groundwater, and metals) and predict natural hazards(earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions,etc)
●​ Geologists try to learn more about the subsurface
●​ Deepest drill: Kola Superdeep Borehole (12.3 KM/Earth’s 6300 KM Radius)

Investigating the crust: Geodesy

●​ Geodesy(geodetics) is the science of location

●​ Earth’s not a sphere, but a slightly irregular ellipsoid that bulges out at the equator.
●​ Earth’s surface constantly changes so finding where given feature on the irregular
“geoid” is important

●​ Satellite-based tracking systems are popular

○​ Most have GPS(Global positioning system) in cars and phones
■​ Also used to track small movements of tectonic plates
■​ GPS receivers calculate their position from time it takes for a signal to be
transmitted from three satellites of known position to the receiver

Investigating the crust: Geophysics

●​ Geophysics is branch of geology that uses a wide variety of physical methods such as
seismic, gravitational, and magnetic properties to discover more about the subsurface
○​ Seismic reflection surveys are a technique where a pulse of energy(sound or an
explosion) created on the surface is reflected and refracted back to a set of
receivers.
○​ Energy travels at different speeds and through different types of material, so
speed of waves returned can create an image of the surface

Investigating the crust: Gravimetry

●​ Gravimetry is the measurement of the strength of the gravitational field and uses an
instrument called a gravimeter
●​ Strength of the gravitational field varies about +/- 0.5% due to heterogeneities below
Earth’s surface
 ●​ Most gravimeters are effectively a weight on a spring that can be mounted on vehicles,
aircrafts, and ships
●​ Gravitational anomalies can be used to determine if a region is in isostatic equilibrium
○​ To indicate unusually dense or light regions underground
○​ To quantity atmospheric mass variations, tides, groundwater level and soil
moisture variations

Investigating the crust: Heat Flow

●​ Heat Flow is the energy lost from one medium to another

●​ Temperature gradient with depth or a geothermal can be measured directly near the
Earth’s surface in deep mines or boreholes.

●​ Normal geothermal gradient is about 25* celsius X km near the surface

●​ Continental crust tends to insulate the interior of Earth preventing heat in the core and
mantle from reaching the surface but heat is also produced in that crust by radioactive
minerals releasing energy.

●​ Oceanic crust is primarily heated from mantle below

○​ The heat flow from Earth’s interior to surface through young oceanic crust
ultimately drives many deep Earth processes

Investigating the Crust: Geomagnetism

●​ Geomagnetism is the study of Earth’s magnetic field and uses a magnetometer to

assess the strength and direction of anomalies in the magnetic field
●​ Anomalies result from changes in concentration of magnetic minerals buried deep
underground
○​ Magnetic field changes over time, geologies can also use fossilized magnetism to
figure out where continents were located in the past

Tectonic Plates

●​ The lithosphere is broken into a a dozen tectonic plates that slide over the plastic
asthenosphere below and interact at plate boundaries
○​ Motion of one lithospheric plate to another is called relative plate motion
○​ Divergent boundaries: plates are pulling away from each other
■​ Force new plate material to be created to fill that gap
 ○​ Transform boundaries: plates slide past each other with no addition or
destruction of either plate
○​ Convergent Margins: two plates collide either resulting in destruction of denser
plate at a subduction zone or crumpling of two plates into an orogeny(a mountain
belt)

●​ Tectonic plates also have an absolute plate motion which is motion of a plate relative to
stationary point

●​ Stationary mantle plumes to track absolute plate motion bc they leave behind chains of
volcanic islands as lithospheric plate above slides past
●​ Some chains visible on seafloor created by mantle plumes no longer exist

Mantle:

●​ Earth’s Mantle is made of ferromagnesian silicate minerals and is therefore more rich in
iron and magnesium than crustal rocks
●​ Still contains silica unlike metallic core
●​ “Ultramafic” → rich in magnesium and iron(Fe_
○​ 67% of Earth’s mass
○​ 84% of Earth’s Volume
●​ Mantle is solid rock but convects over very long time scales giving rise to a number of
important phenomenon at surface of the Earth

Mantle Convection

●​ Over very long time scales rock flows in large convection cells that bring heat from
interior to the surface, though the mantle is solid rock
●​ Hot rock close to the core tends to rise, while cold rock near the surface tends to shrink

●​ Mantle subduction is hugely important to plate tectonics

●​ During subduction cold slabs of lithosphere descend into the mantle, dragging relatively
cool upper mantle downwards
○​ This process displaces how lower mantle rocks which can rise to surface and
cause volcanism either at mid-ocean ridges or within plates

The Core
 ●​ Earth’s core is largely composed of Nickel and Iron metals
●​ It has two layers
○​ The solid inner core and liquid outer core
○​ Core is only about 15% of Earth’s Volume
●​ It is impossible to sample the core, but geologists think the composition is similar to
metallic meteorites that fall on Earth’s surface, which could be the cores of other worlds

Investigating the Interior: Seismology

●​ Seismology is the study of earthquakes and seismic waves

●​ Seismograms record vibrations from the waves generated during the earthquakes that
travel along Earth’s surface(surface waves) and also waves that travel through the
Earth’s(body waves).
●​ Seismologists can use seismograms generated from both natural and artificial
earthquakes to learn about Earth’s interior

●​ Two types of body waves are used:

○​ P waves(primary waves)
■​ Compression like sound waves
■​ Travel through liquids and solids
○​ S waves(secondary waves)
■​ Have transverse motion
■​ Move through only solid rock
○​ P waves travel faster than S waves

●​ By looking at patterns of seismic refraction, scientists were able to determine that the
outer core is liquid and inner core is solid

Earth’s Magnetic Field

●​ Is a geodynamo generated by convection of molten iron and nickel in the fluid outer core

●​ Grains of magnetite in lava flows on Earth’s surface often aligns with the magnetic field
before solidifying
○​ Locking in the record changes in the strength, directionality and polarity of the
magnetic field
●​ This property can be used to determine how continents have shifted over time