Seminar

Modelling glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) can be employed to infer mantle rheologic structure and reconstruct ice history and past topography of the Earth. Most previous work on GIA modelling is based on linear rheology and assumes that the Earth is laterally homogeneous. However, the Earth is laterally heterogeneous, and high temperature and high pressure creep experiments of mantle rocks show that both linear rheology and non-linear rheology can operate simultaneously in the mantle. The work presented in this seminar employs a more realistic rheology to model GIA, i.e. composite rheology where linear rheology and non-linear rheology operate simultaneously and the effective viscosity is laterally heterogeneous. 

Three pieces of work will be shown in this seminar: 1) modelling the thermal effects of viscous heating induced by GIA on Earth models with composite rheology, linear rheology and non-linear rheology; 2) searching for the best ice history model that is consistent with composite rheology; 3) studying whether there is any stress interaction between GIA-induced stress and tectonic stress from mantle convection.