A number of articles have recently been published discussing the nature of the mantle lithosphere and processes that affect the lithosphere/asthenosphere boundary (LAB). The figure above, adapted from Zandt and Reiners (2011), shows a schematic illustration of a dynamic LAB beneath the Rocky Mountains and Colorado plateau. In the new models, there is considerable topography on the boundary between lithospheric mantle (blue) and asthenospheric mantle (pink). In some places, lower crust (green) and lithospheric mantle may have become unstable and “dripped” into the asthenospheric mantle, resulting in regions where there is no lithospheric mantle immediately beneath the crust (where pink meets green). Models of this sort based on EarthScope data from USArray, which provide images of the mantle velocity and attenuation structure, and from PBO data, which constrain motions of Earth’s surface in response to inferred motion of the mantle, are being invoked to explain a wide range of petrologic, geologic and geodynamic features of the western US.

For information about the EarthScope Institute on the LAB in Portland, OR 19-21 September 2011 visit the workshop webpage.

Some of the most recent articles are listed below. For a more complete list of publications based on EarthScope data, see: www.earthscope.org/publications/2011.

Nature article on the LAB beneath the Colorado plateau - Levander et al. (2011).

Nature "News and Views" on the LAB beneath the Colorado plateau - Zandt and Reiners (2011).

The Lithosphere-Asthenosphere Boundary - Fischer et al. (2010) in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Building and Destroying Continental Mantle - Lee et al. (2011) in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.