Experimental Parameters for Wax Modeling of the Deccan Traps Flood Basalt Province

Abstract:

The Deccan Traps consist of ~1,000,000 km³ of predominantly tholeiitic basaltic lava flows, which cover the western Indian subcontinent. Their eruption occurred over a ~1-3 million year period overlapping with the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary and, hence, has been implicated in one of the most significant extinction events in the history of the planet. The extent of environmental impacts caused by flood basalt eruptions is thought to be related, in part, to the amount, species, and timescales of volcanic gases released. Therefore, constraining the effusion rate of Deccan Traps lava flows is fundamental to understanding the K-Pg extinction event. Previous field and experimental work with polyethylene glycol (PEG) wax has shown that effusion rate is a primary factor controlling flow morphology. While sinuous flows and lava domes have been successfully recreated with PEG wax, the two most common morphologies seen in the Deccan Traps (compound and inflated sheet lobes) have not. We used heated PEG-400 wax injected into a tank of chilled water with a peristaltic pump to form experimental eruptions with high flow rate and low viscosity to replicate inflated flow lobes, and low flow rate with higher viscosity for compound flows. Unlike previous experiments, flow rate was varied during a single experiment to examine the effect on flow morphology. The Psi value is used as a scaling parameter to estimate effusion rates for compound and ‘simple’ inflated flows in the Deccan Traps. When combined with field work for volume estimates of the two flow types, these experiments will provide the best constraint on eruption rates to date.