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Some Geodetic Aspects of the Plate Tectonics Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Kurt Lambeck
Kurt Lambeck*
Affiliation:
Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra 2600 Australia

Abstract

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Geodetic observations of gravity, body tides, the Earth’s rotation and crustal motion and deformation potentially provide important constraints in the general inversion of geophysical data for determining the structure and evolution of the Earth. More specifically, the geodetic data provide constraints on the rheology of the planet in the frequency range intermediate between geological and seismic frequencies, on the geologically instantaneous kinematics of the Earth and on the mechanisms responsible for the motions within the Earth, results that are intimately related to the plate tectonics hypothesis. The discussion is limited here to only a few aspects of these “geodetic” aspects of this hypothesis, including deformation along plate boundaries, intraplate tectonics and vertical motions.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 56: Reference Coordinate Systems for Earth Dynamics , August 1980 , pp. 87 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1981

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