Current trends of geodynamic research in India: A review of theoretical and experimental studies

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the geodynamic studies, giving a special emphasis on the recent theoretical and experimental work in India. The geodynamic research has progressed broadly in the three major areas- physical states of Earth's interior, thermo-mechanical processes, and lithospheric slab dynamics. Understanding the physical properties of minerals under extreme pressures and temperatures is one of the major challenges in solid earth geophysics. This review provides an account of the theoretical studies in mineral physics in India, which primarily use ab-initio calculations to characterize the high-pressure behaviour of silicates and oxides, and discusses their implications in predicting geophysical discontinuities. A number of researchers in India are actively engaged in performing physical as well as numerical model experiments to study a range of thermo-mechanical processes, such as plumes in Earth's mantle, subduction of lithospheric slabs in convergent tectonic settings and evolution of the mid-oceanic ridges in divergent tectonic boundaries. This review summarizes the outcome of these studies in the perspective of current research trends in geodynamics.