Quantification of palaeo-reconstruction models
Date
2025-06-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0000-0002-9288-4792
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Doctoral
Abstract
A global palaeo-reconstruction model is a conceptual digital model to show the dynamic behaviours of tectonic plates and hence support researchers in examining how plate tectonics have interacted and influenced the mantle, the atmosphere, and the biosphere over the Earth’s history. The architecture of a reconstruction model often consists of a collection of geodynamic units (GDUs) and a rotation file. GDUs are conceptual building blocks of the model, while the rotation file contains information to move GDUs on the spherical Earth’s surface over time. Some global palaeo-reconstruction models can now perform reconstruction reasonably well back to about 3.0 Ga. However, these deep-time reconstruction models do not have kinematic line features which are the building blocks of modelling plate tectonic boundaries. In the last two decades, some publicly available global reconstruction models, specifically full-plate models, have let users visualize and extract the consequences from the movements and dynamic interaction of GDUs with each other over time, because full-plate models have built-in plate tectonic boundaries. Subsequently, these full-plate reconstruction models now provide users the capability to examine how tectonic activities at the lithosphere level can exchange and influence the atmosphere and the mantle.
As new evidence becomes available, global palaeo-reconstruction models must be updated to reflect these changes. However, plate tectonic boundaries in any available reconstruction model were manually defined. Consequently, it is a very time-consuming, challenging, and error-prone process to integrate new evidence and update any current reconstruction model. The conventional manual workflow with global reconstruction models is also difficult to adapt across architecturally different reconstruction models. Overall, the manually intensive workflows when working with global palaeo-reconstruction models limit the geoscientific community from quantifying various characteristics of a single palaeo-reconstruction model as well as comparing one model to another.
Based on the fundamentals of plate tectonic theory and basic vector calculation, we have developed a series of Python 3.8 modules by using several open-sourced packages and software tools (e.g., GPlates, QGIS, pyGPlates, Numpy, Pandas, GeoPandas, PyProj, and Shapely) to address the lack of comprehensive and semi-automatic workflows, so the whole geoscientific community can effectively evaluate the imbedded kinematic information and define kinematic features for any advanced global palaeo-reconstruction model. Besides semi-automatically generating kinematic line features, we have produced SuperGDU features which allowed us to quantify the degree of continental amalgamation and thus systematically evaluate several proposals regarding supercontinents. The resulting SuperGDU features were also used to assess the similarities and differences quickly and quantitatively among multiple palaeo-reconstruction models. We have also applied the relationships between GDUs and SuperGDUs to effectively examine the spatio-temporal distribution of geochronology data. Finally, we develop a process to create a first-order palaeo-DEM for any advanced palaeo-reconstruction model (i.e., both full-plate and continental-drift).
The main objective of this thesis is to develop and introduce a comprehensive semi-automatic workflow to quantitatively examine the characteristics, specifically the imbedded kinematic information, of any present-day advanced global palaeo-reconstruction model. We then demonstrate how we have utilized this information in different geoscientific examinations such as supercontinents, palaeo-topography, and palaeo-climate.
Description
Keywords
palaeo-reconstruction, paleo-reconstruction, supercratons, supercontinents, plate tectonics, reconstruction, automation, plate tectonic boundary, divergent, convergent, mid-oceanic ridge, subduction zone, kinematic, palaeo-climate, paleoclimate, palaeo-topography, paleo-topography, Precambrian
Citation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
Geological Sciences
Program
Geology