New views on the lowermost mantle from seismic tomography

The lowermost mantle is where subducting seafloor ends it journey, and where large mantle upwellings are thought to start. This depth range is also likely to hold any structure that may be preserved from the earth’s earliest beginnings. The lowermost mantle is therefore of fundamental geodynamical interest. Illuminating it seismologically to a spatial scale that would confidently resolve its hypothesised features has been technically challenging, but we have made significant progress in recent years. I will present new observations, mainly on upwellings/plumes from the lowermost mantle, and speculate on how they interact over space and time.

Host: Doug Wiens and Walid Ben Mansour

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