Recent Advances in Interacting Subduction Zones

Subduction zones are efficient multi-component geodynamic engines that drive Earth’s long-term tectonic, thermal, and chemical evolution. They also regulate large-scale upwelling and downwelling within the mantle-lithosphere system, serving as a key mechanism for global-scale energy dissipation. More importantly, subduction processes play a central role in governing major geological and geophysical phenomena, such as mountain building, arc volcanism, seismic activity, surface tectonics and deep volatile cycling. These processes profoundly influence human environments and planet habitability through natural hazards, long-term landscape evolution, and climate change. Although considerable progress has been made in deciphering the underlying dynamics of subduction, several key challenges still persist—particularly concerning subduction initiation mechanisms, slab-mantle interactions, and upper plate deformation patterns. Beyond these first-order phenomena, subduction zones intricately modulate surface topography through deep-earth activities, such as trench rollback, slab detachment, and related mantle upwelling, as well as through episodic crustal shortening or extension in their overriding plates. These far-reaching effects underscore the critical need for advancing the studies of subduction systems with integrated and multidisciplinary approaches.

Recent studies in geodynamic modelling and observational geophysics now capture kinematically complex configurations of subduction zones from many regions of the globe, such as opposing subduction directions around the Philippine Sea Plate; interacting Calabrian and Hellenic arcs in the central Mediterranean; evolving multislab geometries in the Sunda–Banda arc system; and juxtaposed flat and steep slabs beneath Peru and Chile. These examples set a framework for viewing subduction not as an isolated process, but as a dynamically coupled system where the adjacent slabs strongly influence each other. These findings have led to a new paradigm of tectonic and geodynamic research on interactive subduction zones, which emphasizes the role of their mutual feedbacksfeedback to account for intricate behaviour of trench kinematics, overriding plate deformation, dynamic topography, arc-volcanism patterns and mantle flows over broad spatial and temporal scales.

To further advance our understanding of the multifaceted phenomena of interactive subduction zones, we invite articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

- Geophysical signatures of subduction zone interactions.
- Volcanism and arc magmatism related to multiple subduction systems.
- Evolution of plate tectonics and paleogeographic reconstructions shaped by interactive subduction systems.
- Seismic tomography and imaging of convergent systems with intricate slab geometries.
- Numerical and analogue modelling of complex subduction dynamics since their inception.
- Case studies investigating specific regions of multi-slab interactions and their geological and geophysical effects, such as intra-plate deformations, topographic developments and spatio-temporal earthquake distributions, and heat flow patterns.
- Intra-slab earthquakes and slab devolatilization
- Deep volatile cycling, arc volcanism and its influence on past climate variations.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Trench migration rates, mantle flow patterns, inter-plate interactions, Subduction, Seismic tomography and imaging

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.