Chapter 3. the Crust and Upper Mantle
Theory of the Earth Don L. Anderson Chapter 3. The Crust and Upper Mantle Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications, c1989 Copyright transferred to the author September 2, 1998. You are granted permission for individual, educational, research and noncommercial reproduction, distribution, display and performance of this work in any format. Recommended citation: Anderson, Don L. Theory of the Earth. Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1989. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechBOOK:1989.001 A scanned image of the entire book may be found at the following persistent URL: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechBook:1989.001 Abstract: T he structure of the Earth's interior is fairly well known from seismology, and knowledge of the fine structure is improving continuously. Seismology not only provides the structure, it also provides information about the composition, crystal structure or mineralogy and physical state. In subsequent chapters I will discuss how to combine seismic with other kinds of data to constrain these properties. A recent seismological model of the Earth is shown in Figure 3-1. Earth is conventionally divided into crust, mantle and core, but each of these has subdivisions that are almost as fundamental (Table 3-1). The lower mantle is the largest subdivision, and therefore it dominates any attempt to perform major- element mass balance calculations. The crust is the smallest solid subdivision, but it has an importance far in excess of its relative size because we live on it and extract our resources from it, and, as we shall see, it contains a large fraction of the terrestrial inventory of many elements. In this and the next chapter I discuss each of the major subdivisions, starting with the crust and ending with the inner core.
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