The impact of plate tectonics
Helping to settle a debate over plate tectonics that has divided geologists for decades, scientists at Harvard University have moved a step closer to understanding the complex physical deformation of one of the most densely populated earthquake zones on Earth: the Tibetan Plateau. Published in the journal Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters, their paper tackles a question fundamental to how earth scientists think about the ground we live on: Is plate tectonics applicable on a continental scale? Harvard geophysicists Brendan Meade and Jack Loveless say the answer is yes. They say that on the Tibetan Plateau, where India is pressing north into the rest of Asia at a geologic sprint, the continents deform and interact in ways that can be understood using plate tectonic theory. “There has been a great debate over plate tectonics since the 1960s,” said Meade, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences. “The interactions between continents are so complex....