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Carnegie Mellon Center for Nonlinear Analysis
Mathematical Challenges in Magma Dynamics

 

Gideon Simpson
University of Toronto
Department of Mathematics
simpson@math.toronto.edu


Abstract: Magma, molten rock in the Earth's interior, surfaces at many sites of geologic interest. Perhaps its most vivid manifestation is the volcanic eruption. Magmatism is also essential to mantle convection and plate tectonics; it is universally present at plate boundaries, including mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones. However, the coupling between mantle convection, plate motions, and partial melts is not well understood, spurring us to develop better models. In this talk, I shall discuss recent progress on self-consistent multiscale models of partially molten rock, computational challenges in closing these systems, and ongoing work to couple such models to other geodynamical processes.