Cross-section of a subduction zone and back-arc basin

The outer trench swell, outer trench high, or outer rise is a subtle

ridge A ridge or a mountain ridge is a geographical feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for an extended distance. The sides of the ridge slope away from the narrow top on either side. The line ...

on the seafloor near an

oceanic trench Oceanic trenches are prominent long, narrow topographic depressions of the ocean floor. They are typically wide and below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor, but can be thousands of kilometers in length. There are about of oceanic tren ...

, where a descending plate begins to flex and fault in preparation for its descent into the

mantle A mantle is a piece of clothing, a type of cloak. Several other meanings are derived from that. Mantle may refer to: *Mantle (clothing), a cloak-like garment worn mainly by women as fashionable outerwear **Mantle (vesture), an Eastern Orthodox ve ...

at a

subduction zone Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

. The

lithosphere A lithosphere () is the rigid, outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth, it is composed of the crust and the portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of up to thousands of years ...

is bent upwards by plate stresses, and is not in isostatic equilibrium (distinguish from the "outer ridge" of a

forearc Forearc is a plate tectonic term referring to a region between an oceanic trench, also known as a subduction zone, and the associated volcanic arc. Forearc regions are present along a convergent margins and eponymously form 'in front of' the v ...

Characteristics

Typically, the

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

field over the outer swell is about 50 mGal (0.5 mm/s²) higher than expected from isostasy, while gravity over the

trench A trench is a type of excavation or in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a wider gully, or ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or pit). In geology, trenches result from ero ...

is about 200 mGal (2 mm/s²) less than that expected from isostatic considerations. The bending of the plate is associated with tension in the upper 20 km, and shallow

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

s, caused by tensional failure induced by the downward bending of the oceanic plate are common; about 20 extensional outer rise earthquakes with magnitude 5 or greater occur annually. Most tension axes are perpendicular to the trench, independent of the direction of relative motion between the two plates, indicating that failure is controlled by bending stresses in the plate. Plate bending also causes deeper (down to 50 km) earthquakes due to compression. The

wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tr ...

and

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...

of this flexure can be used to constrain the state of

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

across the plate boundary. The width of the outer rise is directly related to the

flexural rigidity Flexural rigidity is defined as the force couple required to bend a fixed non- rigid structure by one unit of curvature, or as the resistance offered by a structure while undergoing bending. Flexural rigidity of a beam Although the moment M(x) an ...

of the lithosphere. The thickness of the elastic lithosphere varies between 20 and 30 km for most trench profiles. Faulting related to plate bending and stair-stepping of the descending slab into the trench may allow seawater to infiltrate deep into the crust and perhaps

upper mantle The upper mantle of Earth is a very thick layer of rock inside the planet, which begins just beneath the crust (at about under the oceans and about under the continents) and ends at the top of the lower mantle at . Temperatures range from appr ...

. This may lead to large scale formation of

serpentinite Serpentinite is a rock composed predominantly of one or more serpentine group minerals, the name originating from the similarity of the texture of the rock to that of the skin of a snake. Serpentinite has been called ''serpentine'' or ''s ...

in the upper

of the downgoing plate (Ranero et al., 2003).

Faulting In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

of the downgoing plate results in a horst and

graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic conte ...

structure that allows sediment that reaches the trench to be deposited in graben and carried downward. This faulting also breaks up

seamount A seamount is a large geologic landform that rises from the ocean floor that does not reach to the water's surface (sea level), and thus is not an island, islet or cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise a ...

s as they approach the trench. The principal mechanism of frontal erosion may reflect combined effects of seamount tunneling, mass wasting and transport to the trench, deposition in a graben on the downgoing plate, and descent into the mantle. Outer trench swells are geoscientific frontiers and much remains to be learned about them. Recent

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates ...

es have been discovered on ~135-million-year-old

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and I ...

east of Japan (Hirano et al., 2006). These small alkalic volcanoes are small percent melts of

asthenosphere The asthenosphere () is the mechanically weak and ductile region of the upper mantle of Earth. It lies below the lithosphere, at a depth between ~ below the surface, and extends as deep as . However, the lower boundary of the asthenosphere is ...

that exploit bending-related lithospheric faults to reach the seafloor. Hirano et al., (2006) proposed that these small volcanoes erupted along lithospheric fractures in response to plate flexure during subduction. If bending-related faulting and serpentinization is an important process beneath outer trench swells, there are probably also abundant low-

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

hydrothermal vent A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspo ...

s on the swells, similar to those of the

Lost City (hydrothermal field) The Lost City Hydrothermal Field, often referred to simply as Lost City, is an area of marine alkaline hydrothermal vents located on the Atlantis Massif at the intersection between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis Transform Fault, in the ...

References

*Hirano, N., Takahashi, E., Yamamoto, J., Abe, N., Ingle, S.P., Kaneoka, I., Hirata, T., Kimura, J.-I., Ishii, T., Ogawa, Y., Machida, S., and Suyehiro, K., 2006. "Volcanism in Response to Plate Flexure: Science 313, 1426, *Ranero, C., Morgan, J. P., McIntosh, K., and Reichert, C., 2003. "Bending-related faulting and mantle serpentinization at the Middle America trench". Nature 425, 367–373 *Stern, R.J., 2002. "Subduction Zones" Reviews of Geophysics, 40, {{physical oceanography, expanded=other Plate tectonics Physical oceanography