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| Goce detects deep plumes of mantle material rising from more than 2,000 km down |
The maps, published by the journal Nature Geoscience, help to show how material moves up and down, driving a range of geological phenomena. These include subduction zones, where the great tectonic slabs covering the Earth's surface dive under one another.
"Ultimately, volcanic activity and earthquakes occur because of these slow movements inside the Earth's mantle," explained Dr Isabelle Panet from the Paris Institute of Earth Physics, France. "The volcanoes and earthquakes are, if you like, just the surface expression of these deep dynamics," she told BBC News.
