Crust–mantle Model

Explore planet Earth's interior structure; the crust, the mantle, and the coreSee all videos for this article

crust–mantle model, postulation of conditions that would explain the phenomena observed about the crust, the mantle, and their interface. Many years ago, seismic evidence showed a discontinuity, called the Mohorovičić Discontinuity, anywhere from 3 to 60 kilometres (about 2 to 40 miles) beneath the Earth’s surface. The model used to explain this discontinuity and the nature of volcanic materials envisions a crust of lower density siliceous and aluminous material, such as granite, floating on a thick mantle made of denser siliceous and ferromagnesian material, principally basalt–dunite–eclogite.

Studies of the loci of shallow- and deep-focus earthquakes have led to a crust–mantle model consisting of three layers: the lithosphere, the asthenosphere, and the mesosphere. The lithosphere is the crust and that part of the upper mantle that exhibit the same characteristics of rigidity, or approximately the upper 70 to 100 km of the Earth. It is a complex region of heterogeneous composition, the top few kilometres of which are known in some detail but the lower part of which is subject to some conjecture.

The asthenosphere, a less rigid region from 100 to 700 km beneath the surface, separates the lithosphere from the mesosphere. It is thought that this region moves by plastic flow and creep (possibly caused by non-steady-state thermal equilibrium) and that it supports and carries the lithosphere with it, leading to the phenomenon of continental drift.

The more rigid region of higher strength from 700 kilometres down to the core–mantle interface is the mesosphere, or lower mantle.

It is generally held that the Earth’s crust consists of 6, or possibly even 10, large plates of lithospheric material constantly moving with respect to each other; they are thought to be created from the asthenosphere at one edge, the ocean ridges, and to move away from these ridges to be reabsorbed back into the asthenosphere at the other edge, the ocean trenches. The zones between plates are marked by earthquake activity. Earthquakes originate only within the rigid lithospheric slabs, and medium- and deep-focus earthquakes are within the downgoing slabs. No deep-focus earthquakes occur at depths greater than about 700 km, or the upper limit of the mesosphere.