Basaltic volcanism 'samples' the Earth's mantle to great depths, because solid-state convection transports deep material into the (shallow) melting region. The isotopic and trace-element chemistry of these basalts shows that the mantle contains several isotopically and chemically distinct components, which reflect its global evolution. This evolution is characterized by upper-mantle depletion of many trace elements, possible replenishment from the deeper, less depleted mantle, and the recycling of oceanic crust and lithosphere, but of only small amounts of continental material.

Mantle geochemistry: the message from oceanic volcanism

The study of noble gases in oceanic basalts is central to understanding chemical heterogeneity of the Earth’s mantle and origin of the atmosphere. In the terrestrial environment the abundances of noble gases are quite low because they were excluded from solid materials during planetary formation in the inner solar system. This low background inventory helps to make the noble gases excellent tracers of mantle reservoirs. In this context, mid-ocean ridge and ocean island basalts provide valuable windows into the Earth’s mantle. These oceanic basalts are not prone to the degree of contamination often observed in continental lavas that results from their passage through thick continental lithosphere and crust. Mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORBs) form by partial melting as the ascending mantle beneath spreading ridges reaches its solidus temperature, and MORBs are generally accepted to represent a broad sampling of the convecting upper mantle. Ocean island basalts (OIBs) represent melting ‘anomalies’ that are generally related to mantle upwelling. The extent to which ocean islands are derived from a thermal boundary layer in the deep mantle (e.g., as a mantle plume) or from chemical heterogeneities embedded within the mantle convective flow (e.g., as a mantle ‘blob’) has been debated for decades, and is not currently resolved. The isotope compositions of noble gases in oceanic basalts bear significantly on such debates over the chemical structure of the mantle. When oceanic basalts erupt as submarine lavas, their quenched rims of glass may contain high volatile abundances (especially when they are deeply erupted under elevated hydrostatic pressure), providing the best available opportunity for precisely characterizing the noble gas composition of the Earth’s mantle. In favorable cases, inclusions of melt or fluids trapped within magmatic phenocrysts and mantle xenoliths can also be precisely analyzed for noble gas composition.

Measurable changes in the isotope compositions of noble gases …

Noble Gas Isotope Geochemistry of Mid-Ocean Ridge and Ocean Island Basalts: Characterization of Mantle Source Reservoirs

High precision Hf isotope measurements of MORB and OIB by thermal ionisation mass spectrometry: insights into the depleted mantle

A hafnium isotope and trace element perspective on melting of the depleted mantle

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of 

American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published 

in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 6 (2005): Q05007, doi:10.1029/2004GC000824.

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FOZO, HIMU, and the rest of the mantle zoo

Basalt glasses from the Central Indian Ridge are distinct isotopically from mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB) of the Indian Ocean triple junction and western few hundred kilometers of the Southeast Indian Ridge. In particular, very low 206Pb/204Pb and high 87Sr/86Sr signatures, which characterize the latter region, are absent over most of the Central Indian Ridge. In turn, lavas from the unusually deep eastern 1100–1500 km of the Southwest Indian Ridge are different chemically and isotopically from those of the above areas. A rather abrupt eastern boundary to Southwest Indian Ridge-type compositions occurs at or very near the geographic triple junction. This provinciality in western Indian Ocean ridge basalts partly mirrors fundamental regional differences in the underlying mantle but, at least between the eastern Southwest Indian Ridge and the western Southeast Indian Ridge and triple junction, also may reflect variations in extent and depth of melting in a vertically zoned upper mantle. A pronounced low eNd, high 206Pb/204Pb, high 87Sr/86Sr anomaly exists on the Central Indian Ridge at the Marie Celeste Fracture Zone and on the adjacent ridge segment to the south. Despite the great distance (>1100 km) of Reunion Island from the ridge, this zone appears to demark a region of mantle containing substantial Reunion hotspotlike material. Several old (35–60 m.y.) Deep Sea Drilling Project basalts which erupted on the ancestral Central Indian Ridge also record a significant Reunion hotspotlike influence, whereas a 46-m.y.-old sample that formed farther from the presumed locus of the hotspot possesses isotopic values identical to many present (non-Marie Celeste area) Central Indian Ridge MORB. The variably expressed and/or heterogeneous low 206Pb/204Pb material partly responsible for the isotopic distinctiveness of Indian Ocean ridge basalts may have entered into the Indian MORB mantle as a result of continental lithospheric remobilization preceding the breakup of Gondwana, particularly from the portion that would eventually become Greater India.

R. Poreda

Papers

Isotopic and geochemical provinces of the western Indian Ocean Spreading Centers