The wrinkles and depressions in the surface of Turkiye’s central Anatolian plateau mark a newly discovered type of plate tectonics.
under depression In this area, known as the Konya Basin, Earth’s crust is slowly dripping deep into the planet’s interior, gradually forming not only the basin but also the surface geology of the surrounding plateau.
This is called lithospheric dripping, and it’s a phenomenon only recently discovered on Earth, and geologists are still figuring out how it manifests.
“Looking at the satellite data, we observed circular features in the Konya Basin, where the crust is sinking or the basin is deepening.” says geophysicist Julia Andersen. from the University of Toronto.
“This led us to look at other geophysical data below the Earth’s surface, where we see seismic anomalies in the upper mantle and thickening of the crust, where there is dense material. We found that there is a high possibility of dripping from the mantle lithosphere.”
We have a pretty good idea of how it will work. When the lower part of Earth’s rocky crust heats up to a certain temperature, it starts to get a little sticky. Then it slowly oozes down like honey or syrup. pitch drop experimentbut much larger and slower.
As these drops descend, the planet’s crust is pulled down with them. This results in depressionor basin. Then, as the droplets break off into the mantle, the surface bounces back and bulges upwards, affecting a wide area.
we are just beginning to understand this process a while agoBut by modeling its evolution, Andersen and her colleagues have already been able to pinpoint one region of the mantle where dripping is occurring: the Alizaro Basin beneath the central Andes.
Now, careful analysis of the surface geology and laboratory experiments have led them to another oozing trickle beneath the central Anatolian plateau – and that beacon was the Konya Basin.
The Central Anatolian Plateau is known to be uplifted over time. Previous studies suggest that the emission of nuclear-free drips has increased its altitude by about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) over the past 10 million years.
However, the Konya Basin is sinking downward at a rate of about 20 millimeters (0.8 inches) per year. It may not seem like a big deal, but the ground is sinking in areas that are uplifted and requires further investigation.
The researchers’ findings suggest that larger regions of the plateau are in the midst of a rebound phase of the lithospheric drip process, after dropping sticky melt into the mantle. Konya Basin? This is a smaller, second drip formation.
“Basins formed at the surface as the lithosphere thickened and trickled down to the bottom of the region, which then sprang up when the weight below broke and sank to deeper depths in the mantle.” say says Russell Pieskrywek, a geoscientist at the University of Toronto.
“We now know that this process is not a one-off tectonic event, but rather that the initial dripping appears to have triggered subsequent daughter events elsewhere in the region, resulting in a continuously uplifting Türkiye We found that it was causing a strange rapid subsidence of the Konya Basin within the plateau.”
The researchers tested this model by setting up a laboratory experiment. They filled a plexiglass tank with a high-viscosity silicone polymer called . polydimethylsiloxane as a proxy for Earth’s slimy lower mantle. A mixture of polydimethylsiloxane and model clay was used to recreate the upper mantle, and a mixture of ceramic spheres and silica sand served as the crust.
Then they inserted a dense “”.seed” into the upper mantle layer, started the drip, and observed the results. Within 10 hours the first IV drip started falling. By the time I reached the bottom of the box about 50 hours later, the second infusion had started. Get off.
Neither drip was associated with horizontal deformation of the surface, but only in the vertical direction. And these deformations were consistent with the Konya Basin.
“What we noticed was that even though there was no horizontal movement of the Earth’s crust at the surface, over time this secondary drip began to pull the crust downwards and create basins. ” Andersen says. “This discovery shows that these major tectonic movements are connected and that one lithospheric drip can trigger further activity deep within the planet’s interior.”
These results suggest that lithospheric dripping is a multistep process, explaining the strange simultaneous uplift and subsidence observed on the central Anatolian Plateau.
This research nature communications.
