The elusive mantle dynamic topography

作     者：Lijun LIU Lijun LIU

作者机构：Department of Geology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

出 版 物：《Science China Earth Sciences》 (中国科学（地球科学英文版）)

年 卷 期：2020年第63卷第2期

页      面：312-314页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 0708[理学-地球物理学] 081601[工学-大地测量学与测量工程] 0816[工学-测绘科学与技术] 

基　　金：the support of the National Science Foundation(Grant No.EAR-1554554) the Geo Thrust foundation at University of Illinois 

主　　题：topography topographic Earth 

摘      要：The Earth s surface is characterized by a bi-modal distribution of topography,where continents on average are about 5 km higher than the ocean *** basic topographic property of the planet Earth could be intuitively explained by isostasy,in that the felsic・to・intermediate continental crust is thick(~40 km)and light(~2.8 g/cm3)while the mafic oceanic crust is thin(〜7 km)and dense(〜3 g/cm3).There are also large-scale topographic variations within continents and oceans,which could also be attributed to isostasy:the former is usually due to lateral variation in crustal thickness and the latter to different ages of the *** it seems isostasy works just fine for most large-scale topographic features on Earth,why do we bother to further introduce dynamic topography?