Drip and Drop

Those who visit the Konya Basin in Central Turkey, near attractions like the stunning Lake Tuz and the city of Konya, may notice the earth will quite literally be melting under them.

Beneath the Konya Basin, a large, tectonically active depression in the region, the Earth’s crust is sinking into the mantle, pulling the surface of the basin and the plateau that surrounds it downwards, according to Science Alert.

Crinkles and divots in the Earth’s surface on Turkey’s Central Anatolian Plateau have led geoscientists to a discovery of a class of plate tectonics, causing them to rethink all of what was known about seismic activity in the region and beyond.

This new-found phenomenon that occurs when Earth’s lower crust heats up, becoming gooey and dripping into the planetary interior, has been coined “lithospheric dripping.”

Geophysicist Julia Andersen from the research team at the University of Toronto first noticed this oddity when looking at satellite images from the Konya Basin. “We observed a circular feature at the Konya Basin where the crust is subsiding or the basin is deepening,” Andersen explained in a statement.

This observed seismic anomaly prompted the research team to look deeper into the geophysical data of the site and identified high-density material below the surface, a sign of mantle lithospheric drip.

Andersen detailed more about the process of the phenomenon, explaining that, “When the lower portion of Earth’s rocky crust is heated to a certain temperature, it starts to go a little gooey. Then, like honey or syrup, it slowly oozes downward … As this drop descends, it pulls the planetary crust down with it. This creates a depression, or basin.”

Lithospheric dripping was only discovered recently on Earth, at the Arizaro Basin under the Central Andes in Argentina, by the same team of geoscientists, reported Earth.com.

The Konya basin, sinking 0.8 inches per year in the Central Anatolian Plateau, which has been rising for millions of years, is suspected to be the second tectonic event after a larger initial drip that caused the plateau to rise, researchers say.

The researchers set up a lab experiment to prove their theory, replicating the Earth’s mantle and crust. The findings from the experiment indicated that “major tectonic events are linked, with one lithospheric drip potentially triggering a host of further activity deep in the planetary interior,” according to Andersen.

The results supported the team’s theory that lithospheric dripping is a multi-stage process, explaining the plateau rising and the basin sinking both occurring at the same time.