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News Release 11-053
Viscous Cycle: Quartz is Key to Plate Tectonics
Findings offer new approach to understanding movements of continents
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Quartz may play a major role in the movements of continents, known as plate tectonics.
Credit: USGS
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Plate tectonics revolutionized understanding of earthquake distributions (in red).
Credit: Tony Lowry, Utah State University
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EarthScope is an NSF project with thousands of seismic, GPS and other instruments.
Credit: Earthscope
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Mountain chains in the Western United States cover a broad zone of nearly 2,000 kilometers.
Credit: Tony Lowry, Utah State University
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New measurements of quartz abundance from EarthScope data show that mountains are quartz-rich (red-orange colors). The Great Plains, Columbia Basin and Great Valley have little or no quartz (blue-green colors).
Credit: Lowry & Perez-Gussinye
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Rock flow depends on temperature, water and rock type: quartz is the weakest mineral.
Credit: Lowry & Perez-Gussinye
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