Concepts

Lithosphere

LITH-uh-sfeer

Citation Formats

General Reference

Earth and Environment Atlas. "Lithosphere." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/lithosphere.

APA Style

Earth and Environment Atlas. (n.d.). Lithosphere. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/lithosphere

BibTeX

@misc{earthandenvironmentatlas-lithosphere,
  author = {Earth and Environment Atlas},
  title = {Lithosphere},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/concepts/lithosphere},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The rigid outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth it is composed of the crust and the lithospheric mantle, the topmost portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of up to thousands of years or more; crust and upper mantle are distinguished from each other by chemistry and mineralogy.

Facts

Origin Year

1914 1

1914 is the publication year of the Journal of Geology paper series in which Joseph Barrell introduced the term lithosphere; the underlying concept of a strong outer layer was first described by A. E. H. Love in 1911.

Cross-Tradition Connections