The Bent Hawaiian-Emperor Hotspot Track: Inheriting the Mantle Wind
John Tarduno,1,2*
Hans-Peter Bunge,3
Norm Sleep,4
Ulrich Hansen5
Bends in volcanic hotspot lineaments, best represented by the
large elbow in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, were thought to directly
record changes in plate motion. Several lines of geophysical
inquiry now suggest that a change in the locus of upwelling
in the mantle induced by mantle dynamics causes bends in hotspot
tracks. Inverse modeling suggests that although deep flow near
the core-mantle boundary may have played a role in the Hawaiian-Emperor
bend, capture of a plume by a ridge, followed by changes in
sub-Pacific mantle flow, can better explain the observations.
Thus, hotspot tracks can reveal patterns of past mantle circulation.
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
3 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, München, 80333 München, Germany.
4 Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
5 Institut für Geophysik, Universität Münster, 48149 Münster, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: john{at}earth.rochester.edu
