A mantle plume is a buoyant, localized upwelling of anomalously hot, partially molten or near-solid-state mantle material that rises from depth toward the lithosphere, driven primarily by thermal and compositional density contrasts. In geodynamic models, mantle plumes are often represented as narrow, cylindrical conduits with bulbous heads, capable of producing large magma volumes upon decompression melting in the upper mantle. They are invoked to explain intraplate magmatism, flood basalt provinces, and hotspot volcanism, and are studied through seismic tomography, geochemical tracers (e.g., isotopic signatures), and numerical or analogue convection experiments that constrain their temperature excess, geometry, and temporal evolution.
Mantle plumes beneath volcanic hotspots, like Hawaii, Iceland, and the Galapagos, seem to be anchored into a large structure within the core-mantle boundary (CMB). A new study, published in Science Advances, takes a deeper ...
A research group has revealed through seismic wave analysis that the oceanic plate beneath the Ontong Java Plateau—the world's largest oceanic plateau—was extensively altered by massive volcanic activity during its formation. ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 2, 2026
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The King's Trough Complex is a several-hundred-kilometer-long, canyon-like system of trenches on the North Atlantic seafloor. Its formation was long thought to be the result of simple stretching of the oceanic crust. An international ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 29, 2026
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A joint research group has identified that the spatial scale of "heterogeneity" in the upper mantle, caused by a large-scale flow called a mantle plume rising from deep Earth, is less than 10 kilometers.
Earth Sciences
Sep 24, 2025
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If you've ever held or beheld a diamond, there's a good chance it came from a kimberlite. Over 70% of the world's diamonds are mined from these unique volcanic structures. Yet despite decades of study, scientists are still ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 23, 2025
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What do the rumblings of Iceland's volcanoes have in common with the now peaceful volcanic islands off Scotland's western coast and the spectacular basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland?
Earth Sciences
Aug 27, 2025
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A large region of unusually hot rock deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains in the United States could be linked to Greenland and North America splitting apart 80 million years ago, according to new research led by the University ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 29, 2025
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Earth's continents may look fixed on a globe, but they've been drifting, splitting and reforming over billions of years—and they still are. Our new study reveals fresh evidence of rhythmic pulses of molten rock rising beneath ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 20, 2025
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Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within the Earth's mantle, new ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 10, 2025
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Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents formed during the Archean time, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Their findings, recently published ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 3, 2025
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