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Recent contribution of sediments and fluids to the mantle’s volatile budget

Nature Geoscience volume 5, pages 50–54 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Subduction modifies the cycling of Earth’s volatile elements. Fluid-rich sediments and hydrated oceanic lithosphere enter the convecting mantle at subduction zones. Some of the sediments and volatile components are released from the subducting slab, promote mantle melting and are returned to the surface by volcanism. The remainder continue into the deeper mantle. Quantification of the fate of these volatiles requires an understanding of both the nature and timing of fluid release and mantle melting1. Here we analyse the trace element and isotopic geochemistry of fragments of upper mantle rocks that were transported to the surface by volcanic eruptions above the Batan Island subduction zone, Philippines. We find that the mantle fragments exhibit extreme disequilibrium between their U–Th–Ra isotopic ratios, which we interpret to result from the interaction of wet sediment melts and slab-derived fluids with rocks in the overlying mantle wedge. We infer that wet sediments were delivered from the slab to the mantle wedge between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, whereas aqueous fluids were delivered separately much later. We estimate that about 625 ppm of water is retained in the wedge. A significant volume of water could therefore be delivered to the mantle transition zone at the base of the upper mantle, or even to the deeper mantle.

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Figure 1: Physical setting of Batan Island.
Figure 2: Mineralogy, water content and pressure–temperature conditions of the xenoliths.
Figure 3: Trace element characteristics of the xenoliths.
Figure 4: U-series disequilibria in the xenoliths.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the participants of the 2010 State of the Arc meeting on Santorini for their inspiration and discussions. We are grateful to I. Smith for the XRF analyses and to P. Wieland for analytical assistance at Macquarie. H. O’Neill first encouraged us to look at water and K. Grant helped with the initial FTIR scans. The original manuscript was greatly improved by comments from F. Huang. This work was funded by an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship (DP0988658) to S.T., a New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology post-doctoral Fellowship to M.T. and a National Science Foundation grant (OCE 0841075) to P.v.K. It used instrumentation funded by ARC LIEF and DEST Systemic Infrastructure Grants, Macquarie University and industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia

    Simon Turner, John Caulfield & Michael Turner

  2. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Michigan 48109-1005, USA

    Peter van Keken

  3. UMR CNRS 6538 Domaines Océaniques, Universite de Bretagne Occidentale, BP 809, 29285 Brest, France

    René Maury

  4. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia

    Mike Sandiford

  5. Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Laboratoire de Pétrologie, 4 Place Jussieu, Paris cedex 05, France

    Gaelle Prouteau

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Contributions

S.T. planned the project, carried out preliminary analyses and wrote the manuscript. J.C. carried out the majority of the U-series analyses. M.T. performed the FTIR work. P.v.K. carried out the geodynamic calculations. R.M. and G.P. provided the samples. M.S. produced the seismic images.

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Correspondence to Simon Turner.

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Turner, S., Caulfield, J., Turner, M. et al. Recent contribution of sediments and fluids to the mantle’s volatile budget. Nature Geosci 5, 50–54 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1325

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