Deciphering the dynamic deep Earth with seismology: the hunt for slabs and plumes

Résumé: Earth's interior is predominantly inaccessible, and any attempt to depict internal structure, processes, dynamics, and evolution requires remote sensing in some form. In this talk I will present recent models based on high resolution seismic imaging experiments, which permit access to the deep interior elastic structure at a variety of scale lengths. These results, coupled with work by geodynamicists, mineral physicists, and geochemists, increasingly support the idea that Earth's deepest mantle and core-mantle boundary region are as complex and dynamically rich as Earth's surface boundary, and are intimately coupled to whole mantle scale processes, such as plume initiation and slab 'graveyards'. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Séminaires généraux de l'Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris --------------------------------------------------------------------------------