Constraining Slab Sinking on a Whole-Mantle Scale: Quantitative Integration of Surface and Sub-Surface Observations from Geophysics and Geology

How rapidly slabs sink, which trajectories they follow, and how they deform in the process, presents an inferential challenge to geophysics. Mantle rheologies remain highly uncertain, and seismic tomography can merely offer present-day snapshots of a process defined by temporal evolution. Thus observational constraints on slab sinking have tended to remain non-unique. Subduction zones are complex litho-consumers whose time-variant activity can be reconstructed from geological observations on paleo-arcs, but the association of arcs to their subducted, tomographically imaged lithosphere is iffy. Except for young slabs that can be reliably linked with coeval paleo-arc activity a priori, deeper geological time information cannot be exploited with certainty. As long as slab geometries remain "undated", few constraints on slab sinking behavior and hence mantle rheology can be extracted. Sigloch & Mihalynuk (2013) demonstrated a quantitative method to tighten constraints on slab sinking in the lower mantle by investigating the least ambiguous slab geometries observed. Extremely massive and almost vertical slab walls should have been deposited by vertical sinking beneath (intra-oceanic) trenches that remained stationary for a long time (~100 m.y.). We showed how this hypothesis of vertical sinking can be tested quantitatively and successfully, making only minimal assumptions on mantle rheology, and with proper error propagation for all observations (tomography, plate reconstructions, geology). Here the discussion of sinking trajectories and rates is extended to more challenging geometries. Dipping slabs in the lower mantle, and laterally extensive "stagnant slabs" in the transition zone can also be rendered dateable and trackable by (re-)investigation of their paleo-trenches. We discuss examples and link to recent geodynamic modeling of viscous sheet sinking. Reference: Sigloch K & Mihalynuk MG (2013), Intra-oceanic subduction shaped the assembly of Cordilleran North America, Nature, 496(7443), 50-56, doi:10.1038/nature12019