Intraoceanic subduction zone

Abstract

Although most of the system is immersed in deep water, an intraoceanic subduction zone may be one of the most dynamic regions on the Earth’s surface. Lateral convergence and divergence, sinking and uprising, and accretion and removal concurrently occur in a single system of adjoining areas. Intraoceanic subduction zone could also give hints to consider how Earth’s simplest layering of the mantle, oceanic crusts, marine water, and atmosphere interacted and evolved to more diverse and complicated structure and chemistry as seen in the present. Comprehensive understanding of such dynamics and evolution is still in progress, and further investigations are necessary heavily depending on oceanic surveys, as well as prediction and testing by numerical modeling recently significantly developed (Gerya, 2011).