Initiation of Subduction at Relic Arcs

Abstract:

Plate tectonics have been well established for tens of years, but how subduction initiates over tectonic history remains obscure. It has been proposed that passive margins may be a possible place for subduction initiation, but there is no obvious Cenozoic example of such a scenario, including along the passive margins of the Atlantic Ocean. With a computational method that follows the deformation of a visco-elasto-plastic medium, here we show that a favourable locale for subduction initiation is the juxtaposition of an old oceanic plate adjacent to a young, but relic arc. The probable enrichment of quartz in the middle to lower arc crust leads to two major factors which may have induced subduction initiation. One is the compositional density difference between the relic arc crust and the oceanic lithospheric mantle; the other is the significantly weakened lithosphere strength due to the rheology of wet quartz. With such a setup, we observe spontaneous subduction initiation within a few million years. The evidence that Izu-Bonin-Mariana and Tonga-Kermedec subduction zones both initiate adjacent to relic island arcs supports our conclusions. Our results provide an explanation for the rarity of subduction initiation at the passive margins. The continental lithosphere is typically old and cold. Consequently, the thermal effects cancel the compositional buoyancy contrast between the continental crust and the oceanic lithospheric mantle, making subduction initiation difficult at passive margins.