International Project on the Upper Mantle of the Earth

(or Project on the Upper Mantle and Its Influence on the Development of the Earth’s Crust), an international program for study of the structure of the earth’s crust and the shell underlying it, the upper mantle of the earth. The project was proposed at the 12th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in 1960 in Helsinki by the Soviet delegation led by V. V. Belousov.

At the time that the project was organized, it was clear that many tectonic, magmatic, and metamorphic processes were caused not only by the conditions in the deep layers of the earth’s crust but also to a great degree by phenomena in the upper mantle of the earth. Significant progress in methods and techniques of geophysical and geochemical research offered an opportunity to obtain new factual material about the deep interior of the earth. The program of the project was built on the combined use of geological, geophysical, and geochemical methods and included both subject-oriented and regional investigations. Between 1960 and 1970 about 50 countries took part in the international project. The project led to great advances in knowledge of the structure of the earth’s crust and upper mantle and the processes taking place in them. Success was particularly great in studying the deep structure of the oceans, which had hardly been studied at all prior to that time. The Geodynamic Project, which began in 1971, is a continuation of the International Project on the Upper Mantle of the Earth.