Habitable planets need surface water to support life, but how much of it? How much land? Is there a necessary equilibrium?
Plate tectonics and related factors are at the root of the issue. Plate tectonics is the movement of the continental plates on the surface of the Earth as they ride along on top of the mantle. Plate tectonics is still an active area of research, and even with all we’ve learned, there’s still a lot that scientists don’t know.
Continental shelves, shown in turquoise, are rich in nutrients due to the weathering of the continents. Image Credit: coastalwiki.org Then there’s the water content in the mantle. More water in the mantle lowers the mantle’s viscosity, defined as resistance to flow. Mantle water content is part of a feedback loop with mantle temperature. As more water enters the mantle, it flows more easily. That increases convection, which releases more heat from the mantle.This figure from the paper illustrates the feedback cycles linking continental coverage , mantle water concentration , and mantle temperature .
There’s an extraordinary amount of detail in Earth’s tectonics, and it’s impossible to model it all. Especially since scientists haven’t reached a consensus on many of the details. Much of it’s hidden from researchers. They don’t have enough evidence to make solid conclusions yet. No researchers can model every single factor, but this research comes down to the feedback loops between all the factors and whether they’re positive or negative. Strong negative feedback “… would lead to an evolution largely independent of the starting conditions and the early history of the planet, which would imply a single stable present-day value of the continental surface area,” they conclude.
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