Correlation between plate motion and tomography

Abstract

The driving force of plate motions is considered to have a correlation with the upper mantle, but the correlation with the lower mantle is not clear. There might be a heat source in the lower mantle or on the top of the outer core, in addition to ridge spreading, or slab pull force that may originate in the upper mantle. In this paper, seismic tomography at all depths, which represents the mantle heterogeneity and structure, and the plate velocities, crustal age and boundary spreading and convergence rate, which represent the plate motion, crustal thickness, and boundary position, respectively, are correlated in order to investigate the mechanism of the driving force of plate tectonics with respect to the mantle structure.