Christopher

CarchediHe/His

Christopher Carchedi is a tectonic seismologist, most interested in lithospheric structure and evolution, particularly at plate margins. To probe the subsurface on a tectonic scale, my research focuses primarily on joint seismic imaging methods incorporating measurements from surface waves and scattered energy. During his time at Carnegie, Carchedi 's research will focus on improving our understanding of flat slab subduction (FSS) underneath Peru and Colombia alongside Dr. Lara Wagner. Subducting plates around the globe, the primary drivers of tectonic plate motion, display great variability in slab geometry, even at regional scales.

While most subducting slabs descend into the mantle at differing dip angles, the endmember case of FSS defies this trend, with the downgoing plate moving horizontally for hundreds of kilometers and deforming the overriding continental lithosphere before sinking into the surrounding mantle. FSS may have dominated convergence in early Earth, and thus unraveling its occurrence today is critical to grasping past and present subduction processes. Several alternative mechanisms have been proposed to explain this enigmatic subduction style, though a unified understanding of FSS across observational scales remains limited. A sharper understanding of downgoing plate structure, from sedimentation to its hydration and eclogitization states, is necessary to unravel flat-slab dynamics. Clues to the dynamics of FSS can be found in the high-resolution seismic imaging of flat slabs, which can provide critical constraints to the suite of numerical modeling techniques required to better understand the evolution of this transient phenomenon.