Does topography matter for rocky exoplanets?

Topography is a crucial component of the Earth system: having rock exposed to the atmosphere lets surface temperatures self-regulate via silicate weathering, for example. However, there are limits to a lithosphere’s capacity to support mountains or valleys over geologic time. We see in our solar system that the range in a body’s elevations tends to decrease with increasing planet mass. These trends, inherent to planetary building materials, are modelled using well-studied concepts from geodynamics. As a first step, we predict feasible thermal evolutions and dynamic topography scaling relationships for rocky planets, eventually gearing to ask how massive a planet can be and still likely maintain subaerial land.