Synopses & Reviews
Convection in the Earth's mantle governs the thermal and chemical evolution of the Earth, and hence controls much geological activity at the Earth's surface. Progress in determining the present-day mantle circulation, and understanding how it might have evolved in the past, requires advances from many different fields, among them seismology, fluid dynamics, goemagnetism, mineral physics and geochemistry. A Royal Society Discussion Meeting held in April 1988 aimed to bring together scientists from these different disciplines, stimulated by recent results in seismic tomography, which offers the prospect of being able to map directly the structure of the mantle circulation. Papers from that meeting are published in this volume, and summarize the achievements resulting from the recent work in seismic tomography, disagreements that exist among the conclusions arrived at using different types of observations, and areas likely to be fruitful for future research.