How the Ferric Iron Proportion in Basalts Changes Towards the Iceland Plume

Abstract:

Planetary differentiation has been driven by the Earth’s giant convective system, which has been redistributing heat, volatile elements and myriad other chemical species for 4.5 billion years. A key exchange in this transport process is between the mantle and the atmosphere through the volcanic degassing of sulfur, carbon and hydrogen from silicate melts forming in the deep Earth. The speciation and mobility of volatile elements during silicate melting is modulated by the oceanic mantle’s oxygen fugacity (fO2), which away from subduction zones has long been considered uniform. However, a recent study has challenged this paradigm with new measurements of ferric iron proportions (Fe3+/Fe) in glasses from mid-ocean ridge basalts (Cottrell & Kelley, 2013). These new results suggest mantle domains containing material recycled from the Earth’s surface are more reducing than ambient mantle and contain high concentrations of carbon. The pervasive mantle heterogeneity well documented in other geochemical indices may therefore be systematically associated with changes in oxidation state

In this study we have produced a dataset of combined XANES, volatile element (C, S, F, Cl, H, B) and boron isotope analyses of 65 basalts from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge south of Iceland. These samples form a transect from 1000 km south of the Iceland plume to within 300 km of the plume centre, crossing into the zone experiencing the greatest geophysical and geochemical influence from the plume. Accordingly there are major changes in the isotopic and trace element composition of the basalts in this sample set, driven by both an increase in the proportion of recycled oceanic crustal components towards Iceland and a shift to a plume driven flow field. This suite of basalts therefore form an excellent test of the global correlations observed by Cottrell & Kelley (2013), where ferric iron contents anti-correlated with isotopic enrichment, with a high resolution regional dataset. By combining major element, volatile element and boron isotope data we have also interrogated the role of magmatic processes such as assimilation and degassing in influencing magmatic redox state.

References: E. Cottrell & K. A. Kelley, Science, 340:1314 2013.