Plate Tectonic Reconstructions with Continuously Closing Plates$
Computers & Geosciences 38 (2012) 35–42 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers & Geosciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cageo Plate tectonic reconstructions with continuously closing plates$ Michael Gurnis a,n, Mark Turner a, Sabin Zahirovic b, Lydia DiCaprio a,b,1, Sonja Spasojevic a, R.Dietmar Muller¨ b, James Boyden b, Maria Seton b, Vlad Constantin Manea a,2, Dan J. Bower a a Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA b EarthByte Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia article info abstract Article history: We present a new algorithm for modeling a self-consistent set of global plate polygons. Each plate Received 9 December 2010 polygon is composed of a finite list of plate margins, all with different Euler poles. We introduce a Received in revised form ’’continuously closed plate’’ (CCP), such that, as each margin moves independently, the plate polygon 18 April 2011 remains closed geometrically as a function of time. This method solves emerging needs in computa- Accepted 20 April 2011 tional geodynamics to combine kinematic with dynamic models. Because they have polygons that are Available online 11 May 2011 too widely spaced in time and have inconsistent motions between margins and plates, traditional Keywords: global plate tectonic reconstructions have become inadequate for geodynamics. The CCP algorithm has Geodynamics been incorporated into the GPlates open-source paleogeographic system. The algorithm is a set of Plate tectonics procedures and data structures that operate on collections of reconstructed geometric data to form closed plate polygons; the main data structures used for each plate polygon are based on a nested hierarchy of topological elements.
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