Compositional mantle layering revealed by slab stagnation at ~1,000 km depth

Abstract:

Improved constraints on lower-mantle composition are fundamental to understand the accretion, differentiation and thermochemical evolution of our planet. Whereas cosmochemical arguments indicate that lower-mantle rocks may be enriched in Si relative to upper-mantle pyrolite, seismic tomography images suggest whole-mantle convection and efficient mantle mixing. This study reconciles cosmochemical and geophysical constraints using the stagnation of some slab segments at ~1,000 km depth as the key observation. Whereas slab stagnation at ~660 km depth is well explained by the effects of the spinel-perovskite endothermic phase transition, flattening of slabs in the uppermost lower mantle remains poorly understood. Through numerical modeling of subduction, we show that enrichment of the lower mantle in intrinsically dense basaltic heterogeneity can render slabs neutrally buoyant at ~1,000 km depth. Slab stagnation (at ~660 and ~1,000 km depth) as well as unimpeded slab sinking to great depths can only coexist as three different modes of slab sinking behavior on Earth if the basalt fraction is ~8% higher in the lower than in the upper mantle, equivalent to a lower-mantle Mg/Si of ~1.18. Geodynamic models demonstrate that such a moderate compositional gradient can be sustained by compositional filtering of both slabs and plumes as they cross the transition zone, and thus persist over billions of years of whole-mantle convection. Whereas basaltic heterogeneity tends to get trapped in the transition zone and ultimately sink into the lower mantle, harzburgitic heterogeneity tends to rise into the uppermost mantle.