ADVANCING CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE FOR PLATE RECONSTRUCTIONS: PRESENT DAY MANTLE STRUCTURE AND THE STRATIGRAPHIC ARCHITECTURE OF CONTINENTS AS SIGNALS OF A DYNAMIC EARTH

We have been advancing cyberinfrastructure for plate tectonic and paleogeographic reconstructions in support of our vision to closely link surface evolution with the dynamics of the lithosphere and mantle. This has lead to the development of GPlates, an open-source software client for interactive plate tectonic reconstructions. GPlates has all of the traditional functionality of plate reconstruction programs, as well as tools to create, edit and export reconstruction data to geodynamic models. Some features were specifically motivated by geodynamics, such as plate polygons that remain geometrically closed according to the rules of plate tectonics and a hierarchical embedding of deforming regions within rigid plates. By combining the plate tectonic reconstructions with a spherical, time-dependent solution of mantle convection with crustal and lithospheric deformation we form “4-D Dynamic Earth Models”. We will show examples of using the 4-D models to study the linkage of mantle convection with the changing surface topography from several case studies of North America, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Atlantic from the Late Mesozoic to the present using different combinations of observational constraints. Both long-wavelength tilting and spatial migration of sediment depocenters are evident. Both forward and inverse models matching present day seismic tomography and the geoid have been used in our analysis. In our most recent models, we have incorporated plate deformation, including passive margin stretching. In general, the common-component from dynamic topography to sea level change experienced by all continents tends to increase since the Late Cretaceous and partially compensates the sea level fall driven by the changing sea floor age distribution. To match flooding, we find that a common component to sea level change, mostly driven by the age distribution of the sea floor, is required, although for many continents the dynamic topography signal may dominate.