Karen Fischer is an American seismologist known for her research on the structure of Earth's mantle, its lithosphere, and how subduction zones change over geologic history.
[1] In 1989, she earned a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989) with a dissertation titled "The morphology and dynamics of subducting lithosphere".
[5] Fischer's research uses seismology to study the interior of Earth's crust and mantle, especially in the lithosphere and the asthenosphere.
[6] In the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific Ocean, Fischer identified unusually high temperatures in the lithosphere.
[20] Her research on the lithosphere in South American and Africa[21] has implications for the stability of the tectonic plates in the region.