Earth and Environment Atlas

How The Planet Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

Open Question

Do Deep Mantle Plumes Explain Hotspot Volcanism, or Is the Plate Hypothesis Right?

Facts
Why Open
Whether anomalous volcanic hotspots such as Hawaii and Yellowstone are fed by narrow plumes rising from the core-mantle boundary, or are instead explained by shallow, plate-tectonic-driven processes, is contested as the Great Plume Debate; critics led by Don Anderson, Gillian Foulger and Warren Hamilton argue the plume hypothesis has not reliably predicted new hotspots since its 1971 introduction, while the rival plate hypothesis attributes the same volcanism to near-surface plate processes rather than a deep-mantle source. 1
What Would Resolve
Direct seismic tomographic imaging that resolves a continuous, narrow, deep-sourced conduit beneath a disputed hotspot, or a plume-model prediction of a previously unknown hotspot later confirmed by observation, would settle the debate in the plume hypothesis's favor; a demonstrated shallow, plate-driven mechanism sufficient to explain the same hotspots without invoking a deep source would settle it the other way. 1
Discipline Needed
Geophysics 1
Open Question

Whether anomalous volcanic hotspots such as Hawaii and Yellowstone are fed by narrow plumes rising from the core-mantle boundary, or are instead explained by shallow, plate-tectonic-driven processes, is contested as the Great Plume Debate; critics led by Don Anderson, Gillian Foulger and Warren Hamilton argue the plume hypothesis has not reliably predicted new hotspots since its 1971 introduction, while the rival plate hypothesis attributes the same volcanism to near-surface plate processes rather than a deep-mantle source.

What would resolve this Direct seismic tomographic imaging that resolves a continuous, narrow, deep-sourced conduit beneath a disputed hotspot, or a plume-model prediction of a previously unknown hotspot later confirmed by observation, would settle the debate in the plume hypothesis's favor; a demonstrated shallow, plate-driven mechanism sufficient to explain the same hotspots without invoking a deep source would settle it the other way.
OpenGeophysicsMantle Plume (Wikipedia)
Connections

Question On

Mantle Plume, Concepts
Source Mantle Plume (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Mantle Plume (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAlternative HypothesesView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.