Apparent Polar Wander of the Pacific Plate and Pacific Hotspots from Skewness Analysis of Marine Magnetic Anomalies

这个项目旨在提高我们对太平洋板块运动的认识，太平洋板块位于太平洋盆地的大部分之下，相对于地球自转轴，在过去的8000万年里。相对于自旋轴的运动是由海底扩张形成时所获得的海底磁化来确定的。磁化方向将通过对太平洋板块海底上方观测到的磁场的微小空间变化的偏斜度或形状对称性的分析来推断。研究结果将应用于几个重要的地质和地球动力学问题。例如，对太平洋板块相对于自旋轴的运动的估计将与太平洋板块相对于热点的运动进行比较，例如夏威夷热点，后者在太平洋板块上留下了火山的痕迹。两者之间的差异可以用来推断热点相对于自旋轴的运动，这对地球动力学过程，如真极移和地幔对流具有重要意义。

9814673Gordon This project is aimed at improving our knowledge of the motion of the Pacific plate, the tectonic plate that lies beneath most of the Pacific Ocean basin, relative to the earth's spin axis over the past 80 million years. The motion relative to the spin axis is determined from the magnetization of the seafloor acquired when it was formed by seafloor spreading. The direction of magnetization will be inferred from an analysis of skewness or shape-symmetry of small spatial variations of the magnetic field observed above Pacific plate seafloor. The results will be applied to several important geologic and geodynamic problems. For example, estimates of Pacific plate motion relative to the spin axis will be compared with motion of the Pacific plate relative to hotspots, such as the Hawaiian hotspot, which leave trails of volcanoes on the Pacific plate. Differences between these two can be used to infer the motion of the hotspots relative to the spin axis, which has important implications for geodynamic processes such as true polar wander and mantle convection.