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Zhong & Gurnis 1992
Zhong, S. and Gurnis, M. (1992). Viscous flow model of a subduction zone with a faulted lithosphere: Long and short wavelength topography, gravity and geoid. Geophysical Research Letters 19: doi: 10.1029/92GL02142. issn: 0094-8276.

The essential features of observed topography, free air gravity, and the geoid over subduction zones have been reproduced with a dynamically self consistent viscous flow model of a subduction zone with a faulted lithosphere. A fault between the overriding and subducting plates is crucial to understanding lithospheric deformation and gravity in a subduction zone. The topography for models with a fault is characterized by a deep and narrow trench and a broad and shallow back-arc depression, quite different from viscous models without faults which only have a broad and large depression over subducting slabs. For a model in which a slab is 600 km long and 80 Myr old, the resulting trench is approximately 3 km deep and 100 km wide and the back-arc basin is about 1.5 km deep and 600 km wide; the model is characterized by a long wavelength geoid high of about 30 m over the slab, a local geoid low of 10 m over the trench and a 150 mgal gravity low over the trench. The fact that trench depth and width are reproduced in models with a small resisting shear stress, 50 bars, suggests that convergent plate boundaries are probably weak. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1992

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Abstract

Keywords
Tectonophysics, Dynamics of the lithosphere and mantle, Tectonophysics, Lithosphere and mantle stresses, Tectonophysics, Plate boundary structures and processes, Tectonophysics, Rheology of the lithosphere and mantle
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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