This volume opens up new perspectives on the physics of the Earth's interior for graduate students and researchers working in the fields of geophysics and geodesy. It looks at our planet in an integrated fashion, linking the physics of its interior to the geophysical and geodetic techniques that record, over a broad spectrum of spatial wavelengths, the ongoing modifications in the shape and gravity field of the planet. Basic issues related to the rheological properties of the Earth's mantle and to its slow deformation will be understood, in both mathematical and physical terms, within the...

This volume opens up new perspectives on the physics of the Earth's interior for graduate students and researchers working in the fields of geophysics and geodesy. It looks at our planet in an integrated fashion, linking the physics of its interior to the geophysical and geodetic techniques that record, over a broad spectrum of spatial wavelengths, the ongoing modifications in the shape and gravity field of the planet. Basic issues related to the rheological properties of the Earth's mantle and to its slow deformation will be understood, in both mathematical and physical terms, within the...

by K. Lambeck, R. Sabadini and E. B08Chi Viscosity is one of the important material properties of the Earth, controlling tectonic and dynamic processes such as mantle convection, isostasy, and glacial rebound. Yet it remains a poorly resolved parameter and basic questions such as whether the planet's response to loading is linear or non-linear, or what are its depth and lateral variations remain uncertain. Part of the answer to such questions lies in laboratory observations of the rheology of terrestrial materials. But the extrapolation of such measurements from the laboratory environment to...