Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

The influences of composition-sand temperature-dependent

rheology in thermal-chemical convection on
entrainment of the D

-layer
B. Schott a,∗ , D.A. Yuen b , A. Braun c
a
Theoretical Geophysics, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80021, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands
bDepartment of Geology and Geophysics, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, University of Minnesota,
1200 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55415-1227, USA
c GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Section 1.2, Division 1, Potsdam, c/o DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 Wessling, Germany
Received 7 November 2000; received in revised form 3 May 2001; accepted 8 May 2001

Abstract
The entrainment dynamics in the D

-layer are influenced by multitudinous factors, such as thermal and compositional
buoyancy, and temperature- and composition-dependent viscosity. Here, we are focusing on the effect of compositionally
dependent viscosity on the mixing dynamics of the D

-layer, arising from the less viscous but denser D

-material. The marker
method, with one million markers, is used for portraying the fine scale features of the compositional components, D

-layer
and lower-mantle. The D

-layer has a higher density but a lower viscosity than the ambient lower-mantle, as suggested
by melting point systematics. Results from a two-dimensional finite-difference numerical model including the extended
Boussinesq approximation with dissipation number Di = 0.3, show that a D

-layer, less viscous than the ambient mantle
by 1.5 orders of magnitude, cannot efficiently mix with the lower-mantle, even though the buoyancy parameter is as low as
Rρ = 0.6. However, very small-scale schlieren structures of D

-layer material are entrained into the lower-mantle. These
small-scale lower-mantle heterogeneities have been imaged with one-dimensional wavelets in order to delineate quantitatively
the multiscale features. They may offer an explanation for small-scale seismic heterogeneity inferred by seismic scattering in
the lower-mantle. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: D

-layer; Entrainment; Seismic scattering; Thermochemical convection

1. Introduction Cleary, 1974). Since then D

-layer and lower-mantle

Almost 30 years ago, lower-mantle seismic hetero-
geneity close to the core mantle boundary (CMB) was
detected from travel time anomalies due to the seis-
mic phase precursor PKP (Cleary and Haddon, 1972;
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-30-253-5076;
fax: +31-30-253-5030.
E-mail addresses: bert@geo.uu.nl (B. Schott),
davey@krissy.msi.umn.edu (D.A. Yuen), braun@gfz-postdam.de
(A. Braun).
heterogeneity was found on all length scales. Models
of seismic wave propagation have shown, that these
PKP precursors can be explained by either small-scale
CMB topography undulations or by deep lower-mantle
heterogeneity (e.g. Bataille and Flatte, 1988). How-
ever, recent seismological studies using PKP and
PKKP precursors indicate a uniform distribution of
small-scale low-amplitude scatterers throughout the
mantle (Hedlin et al., 1997; Shearer et al., 1998).
Moreover, the P-wave reflectivity of the D

-layer was

0031-9201/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 3 1 - 9 2 0 1 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 2 3 4 - 5
44 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
explained by heterogeneities with scale lengths in
the range of 10–100 km (Reasoner and Revenaugh,
1999), and recent investigations by (Cormier, 1999;
Cormier, 2000) on seismic scattering further under-
scored the multiscale nature of the heterogeneities in
the deep mantle. These observed small-scale seismic
velocity perturbations can be due to small-scale com-
positional heterogeneity resulting from incomplete
convective mantle mixing, because of long mixing
time-scales for fluids having a large lateral viscosity
contrast (Spence et al., 1987; Manga, 1996). Seismic
scattering in the lowermost mantle is also attributed
to scattering at partial melt, when the scatterers
fall into the ultralow velocity zone (Garnero et al.,
1993; Garnero and Helmberger, 1995; Garnero and
Helmberger, 1998). Therefore, the question is, where
do these small-scale compositional heterogeneities
come from. In an attempt to address this question,
we will study with a marker–convection model the
plume driven mixing behavior of the Earth’s D

-layer
(Dahm, 1934; Dahm, 1936) with the lower-mantle.
It has long been suggested (Davies and Gurnis,
1986; Hansen and Yuen, 1988), that the D

-layer is
chemically distinct from the overlying mantle, but
its origin is still debatable. Possible mechanisms
seem to be: (1) chemical reactions between iron
core and silicate mantle (Knittle and Jeanloz, 1986;
Song and Ahrens, 1994), (2) the breakdown of (Mg,
Fe)SiO3 -perovskite (Saxena et al., 1996; Mao et al.,
1997), (3) the accumulation of (parts of) subducted
slabs (Grand et al., 1997; van der Hilst et al., 1997) at
the base of the mantle, and possibly any combination
of these mechanisms, which finally would lead to the
formation of an oxide-rich D

-layer (Anderson, 1998;
Ruff and Anderson, 1980).
Formation of the D

-layer by the segregation of
FeO from the ambient lower-mantle has been mod-
eled by double-diffusive thermochemical convection
(Nauheimer et al., 1996), and by the segregation of
eclogite from deeply subducted slabs, using a marker
technique for tracing the different components, within
the framework of the Boussinesq approximation
(Christensen and Hofmann, 1994). An additional neg-
ative compositional buoyancy equivalent to Rρ = 1.5
was needed to stabilize the forming D

-layer at the
CMB.
The use of markers to portray mixing processes
(Olson et al., 1984; Hoffman and McKenzie, 1985)
has been around for a long time and extension has
been made to three-dimensional space (Schmalzl et al.,
1996), where it was shown that due to both geometry
of the flow and the dynamics, mixing might be less ef-
ficient than in two dimensions. Up to now, mixing pro-
cesses in mantle convection have often been restricted
to thermal convection, even with variable viscosity
studies (Ten et al., 1997; van Keken and Ballantine,
1999). In this study, we will investigate mixing effi-
ciency in the presence of both thermal-chemical con-
vection and temperature- and composition-dependent
viscosity.
Our intention is not to cover a large parameter space,
but to draw attention to the complicated phenomenol-
ogy coming along with the mixing dynamics of differ-
ent mantle materials. We are presenting results from a
two-component numerical model of thermal-chemical
convection in two-dimensional Cartesian geometry to
monitor the structural evolution of an initially strat-
ified D

-layer. An ultrahigh resolution of ‘chemical’
markers is used to resolve the entrainment structures
arising from the interaction of compositionally denser
D

-layer material with lower-mantle convection, to
monitor the evolution of mixing and finally to inves-
tigate the mixing efficiency from chemical buoyancy
and composition-dependent rheology of the D

-layer.
The dominant mode of mantle convection to-
day consists of plate-scale flow interacting with a
strongly time-dependent mantle circulation. The ap-
parent lag between the surface plate configuration and
the lower-mantle was explained by a large viscos-
ity increase in the lower mantle or by some layered
mantle convection (Chase, 1979). Slabs subducting
in the upper mantle may not be blocked temporar-
ily by endothermic phase transition (Christensen and
Yuen, 1984). This would seriously exert a dramatic
effect on the flow structures and cause a triggering
of lower-mantle plumes (Honda et al., 1993), like
the one causing the Pacific superswell (Cazenave and
Thoraval, 1994; Maruyama, 1994).
Another prominent lower-mantle upwelling, the hot
plume under Africa (Ritsema et al., 1998), may be
located there, because of higher mantle temperatures
due to the continent’s blanketing effect, amplified by
its immobility with respect to the hotspot reference
frame since the opening of the Atlantic about 100 Ma
ago, as suggested by the regular appearance of the
seafloor magnetization (Muller et al., 1997).
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 45

Because of the manifold interactions between plates
and global mantle circulation, we have not included
plates or subducting slabs in our model, to avoid un-
necessary complications and to focus on the dynamics
in the deep mantle.
The entrainment structure modeled, here, may well
describe those plumes in the deep mantle produced by
various forms of focussing processes (Hansen et al.,
1993), which may be responsbile for the megaplumes
like under the Pacific (Cazenave and Thoraval, 1994)
or under Africa (Ritsema et al., 1998).
In Section 2 we give a model description of the
thermal-chemical convection employed. This then is
followed by a comparison between the style of plume
convection near the CMB for constant and vari-
able viscosity, in which the composition-dependent
viscosity will be emphasized. We then apply the
wavelet method to analyse the multiscale nature
of the thermal-chemical plumes developed in the
lower-mantle. Section 6 gives a summary and conclu-
sions drawn from these simulations.
2. Thermal-chemical convection—model
description
The problem to be studied is the mixing and entrain-
ment characteristics of a dense D

-layer material with
the ambient lower-mantle. Our lower-mantle model
of thermochemical convection in two-dimensional
Cartesian geometry is covering a depth of 2000 km.
The aspect ratio is one, because of the high resolution
required to resolve the fine structures presented in the
following sections. We are using the finite-difference
program FDCON, developed by Schmeling (Wein-
berg and Schmeling, 1992), which combines a
finite-difference and marker technique to solve the
below mentioned partial differential equations (PDE)
governing multi-component thermochemical convec-
tion. FDCON was successfully checked in benchmark
tests (e.g. Blanckenbach et al., 1989; van Keken
et al., 1997) and applied to several multi-component
problems (e.g. Schott and Schmeling, 1998; Walzer
and Hendel, 1997). Our approach, based on a
finite-difference and marker technique, calls for the
solution of three conservation equations for
1. mass and momentum, combined together as an el-
liptic partial differential equation for the stream-
function Ψ with either constant or variable viscos-
ity η and both thermally and compositionally in-
duced buoyancy forces (Eq. (1));
2. energy, resulting in an equation for the heat trans-
port, and including the effects of viscous and adi-
abatic heating (Eq. (2));
3. composition, by applying a marker approach to
keep track of the high- and low-density components
being advected by the convective velocity field.
The elliptic PDE for the streamfunction Ψ is solved
over an equidistant 121 × 121 FD-grid in the limit of
Pr → ∞ by the Cholesky decomposition method. The
extended-Boussinesq approximation (e.g. Christensen
and Yuen, 1985) is used. Its non-dimensional form is

2 
2 
∂ ∂2 ∂ Ψ ∂ 2Ψ ∂ 2η ∂ 2Ψ
− η − +4
∂z 2 ∂x 2 ∂z 2 ∂x 2 ∂x∂z ∂x∂z
∂T ∂C
= −Ra − Rc (1)
∂x ∂x
where the viscosity η = η(C, T , z) or η = constant.
The equation for the heat transport becomes


∂T Φ
+ (
v · ∇)T = κ T + Di − vz (T + T0 )
∂t Ra
(2)
where T denotes the temperature, which is non-dimen-
sionalised by the scaling temperature Tscale = 1000 K.
Eq. (2) is solved on a grid with four times higher
spatial resolution (481 × 481 grid points). The surface
temperature T0 = 0.273 is included and the ther-
mal diffusivity κ is constant. v is the velocity field
and vz is the vertical velocity component. C is the
chemical field representing a binary system consist-
ing of D

-layer material (high density) and ambient
lower-mantle (low density) substance. x and z are the
horizontal position and the depth.
In Eq. (1) the thermal and the chemical Rayleigh
numbers are defined as Ra = ρ0 gα T h3 /κη0 and
Rc = ρ gh3 /κη0 , respectively, and Di = αgh/cp =
0.3 is the dissipation number. The dissipation function
Φ is defined by the relation Φ = 2ηėij ėij (van den
Berg and Yuen, 1997).
As an equation of state we use ρ(T , C) = ρ0 (1 −
αT + C ρ/ρ0 ), where ρ0 is the reference density,
ρ is the density difference due to the chemical com-
position and α is the thermal expansivity. T is the
46 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
temperature difference between the bottom and the top
surface, h is the distance between bottom and top, re-
spectively and η0 = 1021 Pa s is the scaling viscosity
of the mantle, the acceleration of gravity g points in
the z-direction.
FDCON is using a marker approach with a
fourth-order Runge–Kutta integration in time com-
bined with a predictor-corrector method. The markers
are carrying the values C = 0 or 1, representing the
different materials by their densities and rheologies,
to minimize numerical diffusion. The markers are
advected with the flow, and for each time-step the
effective composition C is calculated from the sur-
rounding markers at each finite difference grid point.
The density and rheology is then chosen according to
the actual C value (Weinberg and Schmeling, 1992;
van Keken et al., 1997). The exact percentage of man-
tle to D

-material is given by the value of the C-field,
which comes from measuring the relative fraction of
the two types of markers within a local grid area. A
pure mantle material is given by C = 0, while C = 1
represents an area occupied only by D

-material.
The C-field, which exists on a grid with spatial
resolution dxdz, is interpolated from the irregularly
distributed markers by counting the markers within a
square of dimensions dxdz centered at each grid point
(i, j ). When the resolution of the grid, on which the
C-field is interpolated, becomes too fine, then it can
happen, that there are marker-free squares within a
C = 1 domain, getting the value C = 0 by default.
In this case, the interpolation produces a few singu-
Fig. 1. Initial conditions illustrated by the marker distribution with the streamlines overlaid (left panel) and the isothermal temperature
field (right panel). D

-markers appear black in the left panel. Ambient lower-mantle markers are not shown.
lar C = 0 points within the C = 1 domain, which
are purely numerical. This type of interpolation of the
C-field by counting markers within grid squares works
well as long as
√the grid spacing dx is larger than ap-
proximately 2 2dm, where dm is the average marker
spacing. The C-field can therefore easily be interpo-
lated on a 361×361 grid from 1000×1000 irregularly
but ‘almost uniformly’ distributed markers.
3. Boundary and initial conditions
The square computational domain has free-slip
boundaries at the top and bottom boundaries, including
reflecting boundary conditions at the vertical side-
walls. The thermal boundary conditions are isother-
mal top (T = 0) and bottom (T = 1), developing a
thermal boundary layer at the CMB over which the
temperature increases by ≈1000 K. Heat flux through
the side boundaries is set to zero.
Initially the model area is isothermal (T = 0) with a
hot bottom boundary (T = 1) and a thermal perturba-
tion in the left lower corner. Therefore, cold-looking
temperatures like T = 0.1 are representing material,
that is 100 K hotter than the surrounding material and
the area, where T ≥ 0.1 will be used to define thermal
plumes and boundary layers.
The D

-layer material is initially stratified along the
bottom boundary, the CMB, with a constant thickness
of 200 km (Hansen and Yuen, 1988; Sidorin et al.,
1999) (Fig. 1).
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 47

Table 1 In Fig. 2, left panel, single markers are visible in the

List of the modelsa compositional plume head (at least in a zoom-in) due
Model η η Rρ Ra Di to a change in marker spacing from the internal fluid
C0 Constant – 0 106 0.3 deformation. In this case, it would not help maters by
C1 Constant – 0.4 106 0.3 increasing the size of the markers. They would simply
C2 Constant – 0.6 106 0.3 overlap each other, producing anything but a black
C3 Constant – 0.8 106 0.3 unstructured area.
V3.1 Variable 40 0.4 106 0.3
V3 Variable 30 0.4 106 0.3
V2 Variable 30 0.6 106 0.3 4.1. Constant viscosity
V1 Variable 30 0.8 106 0.3
a Symbols are explained in the text.
We first show how a constant viscosity plume with-
out any chemical buoyancy, Rρ = 0, would behave as
a reference model with other more complicated plumes
to follow. We also show the development of the mark-
4. Results ers, originating in the D

-layer. This starting plume is
thermally driven and is entirely composed of pristine
The runs we have conducted are based on either con- D

-material. The material boundary between D

-layer
stant viscosity (Section 4.1) or variable viscosity (Sec- and the ambient lower-mantle is nearly parallel to the
tion 4.2), which depends on composition, temperature, T = 0.1 isotherm, in the starting plume scenario, as
and depth. We have varied the buoyancy parameter depicted in Fig. 2. As already stated, the T = 0.1
Rρ = Rc/Ra = ρ/(ρ0 α T ) from no chemical isotherm is used for defining the thermal plume.
buoyancy, Rρ = 0, to strongly chemically buoyant, In Fig. 3, we show the effects from a small amount
Rρ = 0.8. An overview of the models is given in of chemical buoyancy, Rρ = 0.4, due to the denser
Table 1. Here, we want to draw the reader’s attention D

-material. The thermal plume (area in which T ≥
to the technical point, that it is very difficult to display 0.1) becomes now larger than the compositional plume
all of the markers, because there are so many of them. filled with the D

-material. The compositional buoy-
We cannot see individual markers any longer because ancy decelerates the rising plume and thermal diffu-
of their extreme dense spacing. In Fig. 1, left panel, sion is more effective in removing heat from the plume
the D

-markers are shown in black, resulting in a dark due to the longer time of plume evolution.
D

-layer, while the ambient lower-mantle markers are This effect becomes more prominent with a larger
not at all shown. chemical buoyancy of Rρ = 0.6 (Fig. 4). In this case,

Fig. 2. In a constant viscosity model without any compositional buoyancy (Rρ = 0) the material boundary between D

-layer and
lower-mantle is almost isothermal in a developing plume (Ra = 106 , model C0).
48 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 3. In a constant viscosity model with an increased compositional buoyancy of Rρ = 0.4 of the D

-layer material, the thermal plume
fills a larger area than the compositional plume (Ra = 106 , model C1).

the thermal plume speeds away upward from the com-
positional plume, giving rise to a situation in which
the thermal plume has a bigger head than that of the
compositional plume upon reaching the surface.
With an additional influx of denser material at
Rρ = 0.8, hill-like structures are formed (Hansen and
Yuen, 1988, 1989), since the really dense material
cannot be entrained into the thermal plume any longer.
This scenario of little entrainment is displayed in
Fig. 5. The D

-layer now thickens, giving rise to the
interesting possibility for internal convection to occur
in the D

-layer, which can be clearly discerned inside
the D

-layer in the right panel of Fig. 5. Hansen and
Yuen, 1989 also found some evidence for such a type
of internal convection inside the D

-layer but their
resolution was not as dense as the one used here. This
type of small-scale secondary convection cells has
been suggested for the foot of the D

-layer under the
Hawaiian hotspot from seismic studies (Russell et al.,
1998). These constant viscosity results are shown here
in order to compare with the results from a more com-
plicated rheology involving a large viscosity contrast
between the D

-layer and the lower-mantle.
4.2. Variable viscosity
We now introduce a more realistic rheologi-
cal model, where the viscosity η(C, T , z) depends

Fig. 4. With a compositional buoyancy of the D

-layer material of Rρ = 0.6 the thermal plume is ascending faster than the compositional
plume, leading to a larger thermal plume head than the compositional one (Ra = 106 , model C2).
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
Fig. 5. A compositional buoyancy of Rρ = 0.8 of the D

-layer material does not allow that material to enter the thermal plume any more.
However, there is little entrainment (Ra = 106 , model C3).
on composition, temperature, and depth, with the
denser material having a weaker rheology be-
cause of a lower melting point (Weertman, 1970;
Karato, 1997). This viscosity takes the following
form:
η(C, T , z)


(γ a + λbz)C + (a + bz)(1 − C)
= η0 exp
T + T0
where a = 1, b = 0.3, and T0 = 0.273, resulting in
a viscosity contrast of η = η(C = 0, T , z)/η(C =
1, T , z) ≈ 30 for γ = λ = 0.3 and η ≈ 40 for
γ = 0.1, λ = 0.3, respectively; with the D

-layer
being the weaker material (η(C = 1, T , z)) than the
ambient lower-mantle (η(C = 0, T , z)). Almost half
of the viscosity drop is due to the temperature in-
crease in the hot thermal boundary layer and plumes,
and the viscosity is increasing by a factor of 4.5 over
the depth of the mantle due to increasing pressure.
This range of viscosity contrast between lower-mantle
and D

-material is on the conservative side of the
estimates of Yamazaki and Karato, 2001, who sug-
gest a viscosity drop of 1–3 orders of magnitude in
the D

-layer. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, it
was recognized, that a constant Newtonian viscos-
ity is too much an oversimplification in this strongly
time-dependent problem (Jones, 1977).
We then increase incrementally the strength of the
chemical buoyancy from Rρ = 0.4–0.6 and finally
49
to 0.8. Small-scale secondary convection is devel-
oped ever more with an increase of Rρ , as we can
see from the sequence of time-frames from Figs. 6–8
(Rρ = 0.4) to Fig. 9 (Rρ = 0.6). The latter portrays a
flat D

-layer scenario due to the localized strength of
chemical buoyancy. The effect of the low-viscosity in
the D

-layer, caused by the combined efforts of ther-
mal and compositional dependence of the rheology is
(3) to inhibit mixing in the D

-layer by virtue of the large
lateral variations in the viscosity field (Manga, 1996).
Therefore, from Fig. 6 even for a modest chemi-
cal buoyancy strength of Rρ = 0.4, very much less
D

-layer material is entrained into the lower-mantle,
as compared to the isoviscous case, shown in
Fig. 3.
In the case of a moderately strong chemical buoy-
ancy (Rρ = 0.4, Fig. 6), this dense layer can be swept
aside by the strong lower-mantle flow to form lumps or
hills, which can reach a height of around 500 km above
the CMB, when they are hot enough. This resembles
the giant plume-like structures in the lower-mantle
under the Pacific Ocean and Africa (Cadek et al.,
1984).
Subsequently, when they have lost sufficient amount
of heat, these hills would collapse. This kind of mo-
tion in the deep lower-mantle, in which the lump is
always connected to the CMB, produces extremely
small-scale entrainment of the D

-material into
the lower-mantle, which leads to the production of
schlieren structures above the CMB. The expression
50 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 6. D

-layer dynamics with variable viscosity visualized by the chemical composition of the two-material system—the lower-mantle and
the D

-layer (black markers)—with stream-lines overlaid. A not too high compositional buoyancy of Rρ = 0.4 allows the D

-material to
rise up to 500 km above the CMB (t = 346 Ma). However, these D

-hills collapse, when having lost sufficient heat, producing small-scale
schlieren structures due to the compositional viscosity contrast of η = 30 (t = 366 Ma, model V3).
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 51

Fig. 7. Thermal evolution of the initially horizontally stratified isothermal lower-mantle—D

-layer system with Rρ = 0.4 and η = 30
(model V3).
52 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 8. Evolution of the D

-layer with a viscosity contrast of η = 40, Rρ = 0.4 (model V3.1). Again only the markers of the D

-material
are shown, not to obfuscate the tiny schlieren structures developing within ≈200 Ma after an initial transient period of D

-layer internal
convection.
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 53

Fig. 9. D

-layer internal convection is dominant at higher compositional buoyancy of Rρ = 0.6 and a viscosity contrast of η = 30
(model V2). Thermal plumes starting from the D

-hills are entraining little D

-material into the ambient mantle. Composition is shown
by D

-markers in the left, and temperature in the right panels.

‘schlieren’ is the one used in, e.g. schlieren photog-
raphy, a common technique to visualize flow patterns
in experimental fluid dynamics (van Dyke, 1982). We
will analyze these schlieren structures with wavelets
in Section 5. A wavelet analysis of a whole time se-
ries would lie beyond the scope of this paper, where
we analyze two representative snapshots, to illustrate
typical multiscale features of the evolved structures.
With increasing value of Rρ in the D

-layer of up
to Rρ = 0.6 (Fig. 9), the dense D

-layer becomes
more and more stably stratified with thermal plumes
issuing from the top of the hill, but entraining very
little D

-material (Figs. 8–10). This scenario of large
values of Rρ has already been studied by Hansen and
Yuen (1989), Hansen and Yuen (1990) and Tackley
(1998b).
5. Analysis of the schlieren structure using
wavelets
The structures in thermal-chemical convection have
a distinct multiscale character because of the dif-
ferences in the scales of the chemical and thermal
forcings and in the thermal and chemical viscosity
gradients. Wavelets represent a recently developed
tool in mathematics, which allows one to analyze
multiscale structures in a readily understandable for-
mat (Mallat, 1998). These schlieren or tendril-like
structures have been analyzed by interpolating a con-
tinuous compositional field C either on a 121 × 121
grid or on a 361 × 361 grid from 1000 × 1000 mark-
ers, thus yielding a spatial resolution of 16.5 km or
5.5 km, respectively. These continuous C-fields are
54 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 10. A high compositional buoyancy of Rρ = 0.8 is causing a flat D

-layer (η = 30, model V1). The layer internal convection cells
have aspect ratios between 1.4 and 2 with an average of 1.6. Very little D

-material is entrained into the ambient mantle. Composition is
shown by D

-markers in the left, and temperature in the right panels.

displayed in Figs. 11 and 12, they have been taken
from the last time-steps in Figs. 6 and 8. We are
analyzing two different, however typical, schlieren
structures at two different spatial resolutions in order
to demonstrate the sensitivity of the analysis to spatial
resolution.
First, we will focus on the high resolution grid
(Fig. 12). For extracting the relevant scale informa-
tion from the grid, a suitable way is to transform
one-dimensional spatial profiles, using both Fourier
and wavelet methods. The mixing schlieren structure
shown in Fig. 12 is now analyzed along the nine hori-
zontal profiles X1 to X9. Analysis was done along the
horizontal and vertical profiles, however, the results
are the same for both sets of profiles. Therefore, we
are focusing on the horizontal profiles only.
Due to computational efficiency, all profiles were
extended by zero leading to 512 intervals with a spac-
ing of 5.5 km (Fig. 13. This particular spacing allows
a minimum resolvable wavelength of 11 km, which
is comparable to the length-scale of heterogeneities,
as observed by scattered waves in PKIKP/PKP stud-
ies (Cormier, 2000). The maximum wavelength is
5632 km corresponding to twice the extended pro-
file length. Before transforming the profiles, a linear
trend was removed for avoiding aliasing effects. The
horizontal profiles are located in depths ranging from
600 km in the lower-mantle (profile X1) down to
1900 km near the CMB (profile X9). The normalized
Fourier amplitude spectra are shown in Fig. 14.
Obviously, the spectral energy is transferred from
the short wavelengths in profiles crossing the top of
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 55

Fig. 11. Chemical field of the last time-step shown in Fig. 6 interpolated on a 121 × 121 grid, yielding a spatial resolution of 16.5 km.
The locations of the examined horizontal profiles across the composital schlieren structure are indicated by lines.

the mixing structure (profiles X2 and X3) to longer
wavelengths near the CMB (profile X9). The shortest
wavelength is associated with the entrainment of the
D

-material.
For multiscale features, such as shown in the en-
trainment process, a wavelet analysis is a more suit-
able tool for analyzing the spatial profiles. Fourier
transformation cannot identify precisely the source
of the energy, it can only determine the sum of the
power, while losing the phase information needed for
locating the position of the heterogeneities. Addition-
ally, the advantage of a wavelet analysis as compared
to a windowed Fourier transform comes from its be-
ing scale-independent, because wavelets with short
56 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 12. Chemical field of the last time-step shown in Fig. 8 interpolated on a 361 × 361 grid, yielding a spatial resolution of 5.5 km. The
locations of the examined profiles, X1 to X9, across the composital schlieren structure are shown by dashed lines.

windows are used for short wavelengths and long
windows for long wavelengths. Hence, there are no
aliasing effects due to high and low frequency contri-
butions. We will take again one-dimensional profiles
and determine the dominant modes of variability
and how these modes would change along profile
(Fig. 13). This technique has been used by Simons
and Hager (1997) to examine post-glacial rebound.
We have used the continuous wavelet transform
(CWT) (Daubechies, 1992) and a one-dimensional
Morlet wavelet (Goupillaud et al., 1984) for analyz-
ing the 9 profiles shown in Fig. 11 and the 18 profiles
shown in Fig. 12, respectively. Generally,
 a CWT
can be written like Wψ (s, χ ) = w(x)ψs,χ (x) dx,
√ ψs,χ (x) represents the wavelet ψs,χ (x) =
where
(1/ s)ψ((x − χ )/s) (s > 0, χ ∈ R). A set of
wavelets ψs,χ (x) is created from a so-called mother
wavelet ψx by shifting and scaling. The shifting pa-
rameter χ is responsible for the location, and s is the
scaling parameter, stretching (s > 1) or compressing
(s < 1) the mother wavelet. We have chosen a com-
plex Morlet wavelet (Morlet et al., 1982) for the anal-
ysis to minimize the space–wavenumber uncertainty
of χ k ≥ 1/4π . Here, the scaling parameter s can
be regarded as a wavelength, although for most other
wavelets, s has a more general meaning and is called
‘scale’. This kind of Morlet wavelet has been used
recently in analyzing time-series in mantle convec-
tion (Vecsey and Matyska, 2001). A complex Morlet
wavelet is a plane wave modulated by a Gaussian
function and takes the form
ψs,χ (x) = π −1/4 (sl)−1/2 e−i2π(1/s)(x−χ)
×e−1/2((x−χ)/sl)
2
(4)
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 57

Fig. 13. Horizontal profiles of the chemical field. Their location is shown in Fig. 12.
58 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 14. Fourier amplitude spectra of the nine horizontal profiles, for location see Fig. 12. Each spectrum is normalized to its maximum.
The shaded lines indicate how the energy is moving from short to longer wavelength. The profiles starting at the top of the mixing structure
in 600 km depth (top) down to the CMB (bottom).

䉴
Fig. 15. The nine selected horizontal profiles of Fig. 13 were analyzed using a continuous wavelet transform with a Morlet wavelet of length
six. Each of the nine panels is divided into four diagrams, showing in the upper left—the wavelet-scalogram; upper right—the normalized
Fourier amplitude spectrum; lower left—the analyzed profile; lower right—the real part of the Morlet wavelet. The wavelet-scalogram
shows the color-coded space–wavelength distribution of the analyzed profile. Red colors indicate high-amplitudes, blue colors indicate
low-amplitudes, values below 15% of the maximum are left white. The color-coded plots allow to identify both the wavelength of the
individual signal as well as its location in the spatial profile, since the spatial and wavelength axes of the original profile, the Fourier
spectrum and the wavelet transform are identical, respectively. The upper left panel is representing the wavelet transform of a single
schlieren structure of thickness 5.5 km, here, the advantages of the wavelet transform become obvious, since the Fourier transform is not
able to detect neither the wavelength nor the location of the signal. The upper three panels crossing the top of the schlieren structure
show wavelengths from 11 to 40 km on the one hand, and from 200 to 400 km on the other. The middle three panels show wavelengths
ranging from 100 to 700 km. Finally, the lower three panels indicate wavelengths around 1000 km representing the thickness of the base
of the evolving D

-structure. Thus, we identify three different levels of schlieren thickness, 6–20 km at the top, 50–350 km in the middle
and round 500 km at the base of the model.
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65 59

Fig. 15.

An additional parameter l was introduced to allow for uncertainty principle, the greater the number of oscil-
an arbitrary shift of the wavelet transform resolution in lations, the lower would be the spatial resolution and
favor of spatial or wavenumber resolution for a fixed vice versa. The sampling in space and wavenumber is
scale s without changing the central wavenumber. We then determined by
have determined l, the length of the wavelet, by the √ √
spatial and wavenumber resolution, thus, l represents sl 2 s 2
χ = √ , k = , = (5)
the number of oscillations of the wavelet. From the 2 4π sl s 4π l
60 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65

Fig. 16. The nine selected horizontal profiles of Fig. 11 were analyzed using a continuous wavelet transform with a Morlet wavelet of
length six. Grouping of the panels is analog to that in Fig. 15, where the panels are explained in the figure caption. The upper left panel
is representing the wavelet transform of a single schlieren structure of thickness 16.5 km. The upper three panels crossing the top of the
schlieren structure show a maximum amplitude for wavelengths around 100 km, with a significant contribution for wavelengths down to
some 10 km. The middle three panels show a maximum amplitude for wavelengths around 1000 km, with a significant contribution for
wavelengths down to 100 km. Finally, the lower three panels indicate wavelengths around 1000 km representing the thickness of the base
of the evolving D

-structure. The lower right panel indicating an amplitude shift towards shorter wavelength. Thus, we identify three
different levels of schlieren thickness, 10–50 km at the top, 50–500 km in the middle and round 500 km at the base of the model.
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
By inspecting at the third equation in Eq. (5), we can
see that a logarithmic equidistant sampling in χ is ap-
propriate. For maintaining a balance between the spa-
tial and the wavenumber resolution, a length of l =
6 was chosen. A linear fit was again removed from
the profiles and each profile was then operated on by
the Morlet wavelet. The numerical implementation of
the CWT is a discrete convolution between the spa-
tial profile and the discretized wavelet at all scales.
For interpretation, the wavelet transform was interpo-
lated in the space–wavenumber domain and the am-
plitudes were color-coded. Figs. 15 and 16 present the
wavelet-scalograms of the nine respective horizontal
profiles (Figs. 11 and 12) together with the spatial pro-
file, its Fourier spectrum and the real part of the Morlet
wavelet used. The L2-normalized wavelet-scalogram
in the upper left box of each panel of Figs. 15 and 16
reveal clearly the high-amplitudes in red colors and
the low-amplitudes in blue colors. A cut-off at 15% of
the maximum is introduced for suppressing the lowest
amplitudes in order to enhance the clarity.
Three different levels of tendril wavelength/thickness
can be identified in both schlieren structures
(Figs. 15 and 16): the upper three panels contain
high-amplitudes for wavelengths between 11 and
40 km at 5.5 km resolution (Fig. 15, 361 × 361 grid,
corresponding profiles X1 to X3 in Fig. 12) and
wavelengths between some 10 and 100 km at 16.5 km
resolution (Fig. 16, 121 × 121 grid, corresponding
profiles in Fig. 11). Panels in the middle indicate
wavelength between 100 and 700 km at 5.5 km reso-
lution (Fig. 15, 361 × 361 grid, corresponding profiles
X4 to X6 in Fig. 12) and wavelengths between 100
and 1000 km at 16.5 km resolution (Fig. 16, 121 × 121
grid, corresponding profiles in Fig. 11). The lower
three panels show highest values at wavelengths of
about 1000 km on both grids (Figs. 15 and 16).
Thus, the corresponding schlieren thickness is
5–20 km at the top of the mixing structure, 50–500 km
in the middle, and 500 km at the CMB. This result
remains the same for both schlieren structures and
holds for both spatial resolutions examined. Such en-
trainment pattern typically evolve in thermochemical
convection, when a large viscosity difference between
the fluids is included. It also confirms the usefulness
of the wavelet analysis as a tool for examining and
comparing the characteristics of multiscale structures
at different spatial resolution. We note especially that
61
the small-scale schlieren at the top of the mixing
structure may explain the existence of small-scale
scatterers, found in seismic wave inversions (Frey-
bourger et al., 1999; Cormier, 2000).
6. Conclusions and discussion
The purpose of our work on compositionally de-
pendent rheology in thermal-chemical convection
is to draw attention to the complicated D

-layer
entrainment structures most likely existing in the
lower-mantle, which have the potential of explaining
the observed seismic scattering. Here, we are not
concerned with subduction and the overall mantle
mixing processed (e.g. Gurnis, 1986a; Olson et al.,
1984; Christensen and Hofmann, 1994).
The results of our numerical thermal-compositional
convection model show, that a low viscous D

-layer
with a rather small density increased of 5% may
not be entrained into thermal plumes starting from
the D

-layer. A similar behavior has been found for
multi-layer Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities occurring in
magmatic diapirs (Cruden et al., 1995). However, the
partially entrained D

-layer material can form distinct
lumps, which do not need to have a hill-like shape
with a smooth surface (Tackley, 1998a), but can have a
complex tree- or polyp-like structure. Similar complex
structures have been modeled by Hansen and Yuen
(2000), however, their model could not resolve the
small-scale structure of branches or tentacles reaching
out into the lower-mantle (Fig. 12). The heterogeneity
is developing the shape of a large ‘blob’ connected to
long thin tendrils, which lengthen exponentially with
time, while the ‘blob’ deforms much slower (Gurnis,
1986b). Similar ‘blobs’ may, therefore, explain some
aspects of heterogeneity in the Earth’s mantle (Becker
et al., 1999). For these tiny schlieren structures we
find scaling diameters in the order of a few to 10 km,
which is too small to be resolved in numerical mod-
els of double-diffusive thermal-chemical convection
(Hansen and Yuen, 2000). The double-diffusive con-
vection approach also inhibits the development of
small-scale mixing (Montague and Kellogg, 2000).
Schlieren structures of diameters down to about
5 km are robust features in our 2000 km × 2000 km
large model and subsequent analysis, when 1000×
1000 markers are used, because a 5 km thick ‘tentacle’
62 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
is defined by about three markers along its diame-
ter. Additional schlieren structures with even smaller
diameters could be made visible by an increasing
number of markers, while already detected structures
would become smoother, but would not disappear.
We suggest, that these tiny schlieren structures can
explain the recently proposed uniform (Hedlin et al.,
1997) or slightly depth dependent (Shearer et al.,
1998; Cormier, 2000) distribution of small-scale
low-amplitude scatterers throughout the mantle with
typical scale-lengths around 10 km. Due to thermal
diffusion pronounced small-scale thermal perturba-
tions cannot survive on the long time-scale our mod-
els are covering, but seismic velocity perturbations
on length-scales of 200–1000 km may be of thermal
origin (Fig. 7).
The observed ‘non-decaying’ power spectrum of
scattered seismic energy attributed to heterogeneity
significantly departs from that one expected from ther-
mal variations in a convecting mantle. The entrain-
ment of small-scale (10–100 km) schlieren structures
is a likely explanation for such a ‘non-decaying’ power
spectrum (Cormier, 2000).
A maximum of about 40% of the initially strati-
fied D

-layer material can be ‘mixed’ into the am-
bient lower-mantle within a model time of 475 Ma
(Fig. 6), if we are counting the C = 1 markers (rep-
resenting the D

-material) having a depth shallower
than 500 km above the CMB. However, most of the
D

-material is forming into large lumps, which are all
the time staying close to the CMB. We, therefore, con-
clude, that these lumps can still serve today as a dis-
tinct chemical reservoir in the Earth’s mantle, similar
to the deep-mantle blobs (Becker et al., 1999).
While the small-scale schlieren cause seismic scat-
tering (Cormier, 2000), the bulk of the D

-layer shows
a strong longer–wavelength topographical undulation,
which is reflected by the short-length scale horizontal
variations in the topography, due to a P-wave reflec-
tor attributed to the top portion of the D

-layer. Such
variations of the depth of the D

-reflector between 150
and 200 km have been found beneath the southwest-
ern Pacific (Yamada and Nakanishi, 1998) and north-
ern Siberia (Freybourger et al., 1999). Under northern
Siberia PdP travel times have also been explained with
a 7 km thick 3% low velocity lamella lying approx-
imately 300 km above the CMB (Freybourger et al.,
1999).
Models of mantle mixing should principally be stud-
ied in three dimensions (Ferrachat and Ricard, 1998),
because it is difficult to scale the mixing behavior from
2D to 3D, and mixing in 2D is more efficient than
in 3D (Schmalzl et al., 1996). However, the need of
very high spatial resolution and many markers to track
the materials with high accuracy over long time spans
is not easily achievable in 3D today. Computationally
faster 2D models of thermal-chemical convection re-
main still a versatile tool to study basic mixing prop-
erties.
For the choice Di = 0 (incompressible convec-
tion) an isothermal mantle is the only reasonable ini-
tial condition, that is gravitationally stable. For the
choice Di > 0 (‘compressible’ convection) all initial
conditions between an isothermal mantle and an adi-
abatic temperature gradient are gravitationally stable.
While the choice of an adiabatic temperature gradi-
ent is essential from the viewpoint of thermodynam-
ics, we have chosen the isothermal initial condition to
make the different results easier to compare. We are
therefore overestimating the thermal buoyancy forces
for Di > 0. However, preliminary results for starting
with an adiabatic temperature gradient show, that even
very little additional compositional buoyancy of the
D

-layer, as low as Rρ ≈ 0.2, are enough for stabiliz-
ing the D

-layer at the CMB. This is in full agreement
with the results of Tackley (1998b).
Values of Rρ greater than one are typically needed
to stabilize the D

-layer at the CMB when the Boussi-
nesq approximation is used together with constant ma-
terial properties, such as the thermal expansivity and
viscosity (Christensen and Hofmann, 1994; Davaille,
1999; Montague and Kellogg, 2000). The Boussinesq
approximation is, therefore, not appropriate at all for
asessing the stability of the D

-layer.
We have not considered the additional stirring of
the D

-layer by other processes such as by subduct-
ing slabs, because recent numerical models show, that
cold dense downwellings sinking into the D

-layer
do not necessarily trigger instability (thermochemical
plumes) in their surrounding, by either sweeping the
D

-layer aside or by increasing the temperature gra-
dient, but may lead to the formation of highly compli-
cated structures of layered thermochemical convection
(Hansen, 2000). Moreover, subducting slabs may not
reach the CMB, but hover in the mid-lower-mantle,
due to the decreasing thermal expansivity with in-
 B. Schott et al. / Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 129 (2002) 43–65
creasing pressure (Chopelas and Boehler, 1992;
Kesson et al., 1998; Kaneshima and Helffrich, 1999).
However, this picture may change from slab to slab
(Cizkova et al., 1998) because of the rheological de-
pendence on the subducting velocity (Karato et al.,
2001). Such additional complications are beyond this
study, where we are focusing on the style of entrain-
ment of D

-material into the lower-mantle. Once
the D

-material is entrained by the plumes, it will
certainly be further mixed into the mantle by fluid
dynamical processes stirring the mantle.
Acknowledgements
We thank discussions with U. Christensen, U.
Hansen, S. Karato, H. Paulssen, P. Tackley, W. Wang,
and D. Yamazaki, and particularly H. Schmeling and
an anonymous reviewer for their excellent reviews,
that helped us improving the manuscript. Special
thanks to H. Schmeling for kindly providing his code
FDCON, and to Swedish NFR for supporting Bertram
Schott with a Post-Doc stipend, which made this re-
search possible. Support for this research also comes
from the geophysics program of NSF. All calculations
have been done on the SGI-Origin2000 computers of
the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI).
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