It is now widely accepted that Earth's transition zone, located at depth between 410 and 670 km, is most likely hydrated. However, a definite conclusion has yet to be reached regarding the nature of ...the hydrous phase or phases that have the capacity to efficiently transport water down to such depths. In the April issue of American Mineralogist, Nishihara and Matsukage (2016) show that (FeH)1-xTixO2 can be stable in wet basalts and sediments at high pressures and temperatures. These phases allow subducting lithosphere to transport far more water to the mantle transition zone than previously thought possible.
The second critical endpoint in the basalt-HâO system was directly determined by a high-pressure and high-temperature X-ray radiography technique. We found that the second critical endpoint occurs ...at around 3.4 GPa and 770 °C (corresponding to a depth of approximately 100 km in a subducting slab), which is much shallower than the previously estimated conditions. Our results indicate that the melting temperature of the subducting oceanic crust can no longer be defined beyond this critical condition and that the fluid released from subducting oceanic crust at depths greater than 100 km under volcanic arcs is supercritical fluid rather than aqueous fluid and/or hydrous melts. The position of the second critical endpoint explains why there is a limitation to the slab depth at which adakitic magmas are produced, as well as the origin of across-arc geochemical variations of trace elements in volcanic rocks in subduction zones.
Subduction-zone magmatism is triggered by the addition of H ₂O-rich slab-derived components: aqueous fluid, hydrous partial melts, or supercritical fluids from the subducting slab. Geochemical ...analyses of island arc basalts suggest two slab-derived signatures of a melt and a fluid. These two liquids unite to a supercritical fluid under pressure and temperature conditions beyond a critical endpoint. We ascertain critical endpoints between aqueous fluids and sediment or high-Mg andesite (HMA) melts located, respectively, at 83-km and 92-km depths by using an in situ observation technique. These depths are within the mantle wedge underlying volcanic fronts, which are formed 90 to 200 km above subducting slabs. These data suggest that sediment-derived supercritical fluids, which are fed to the mantle wedge from the subducting slab, react with mantle peridotite to form HMA supercritical fluids. Such HMA supercritical fluids separate into aqueous fluids and HMA melts at 92 km depth during ascent. The aqueous fluids are fluxed into the asthenospheric mantle to form arc basalts, which are locally associated with HMAs in hot subduction zones. The separated HMA melts retain their composition in limited equilibrium with the surrounding mantle. Alternatively, they equilibrate with the surrounding mantle and change the major element chemistry to basaltic composition. However, trace element signatures of sediment-derived supercritical fluids remain more in the melt-derived magma than in the fluid-induced magma, which inherits only fluid-mobile elements from the sediment-derived supercritical fluids. Separation of slab-derived supercritical fluids into melts and aqueous fluids can elucidate the two slab-derived components observed in subduction zone magma chemistry.
Freezing-point depression was measured in aqueous fluid inclusions to determine salinities in six samples of jadeitite and jadeite-rich rock from the Jagua Clara serpentinite mélange of the Rio San ...Juan Complex, Dominican Republic. The mélange represents a fossil subduction-zone channel from a cold, mature subduction zone with a geothermal gradient of ~6 °C/km. One hundred and twenty-five determinations of salinity in primary inclusions hosted in jadeite, quartz, apatite and lawsonite range between extremes of 1.2 and 8.7, but yield a well-defined mean of 4.5 ± 1.1 wt% (±1 s.d.) NaCl equiv, slightly higher than mean seawater (3.5 wt%). In one sample, eight additional fluid inclusions in quartz aligned along grain boundaries yield slightly lower values of 2.7 ± 1.3 wt% NaCl equiv. Homogenization temperatures were also measured for 47 fluid inclusions in two samples, but primary entrapment densities are not preserved. It is significant that the suite includes two types of samples: those precipitated directly from an aqueous fluid as well as examples of metasomatic replacement of a pre-existing magmatic rock. Nevertheless, the results indicate identical salinity for both types and suggest a much stronger genetic link between the two types of jadeitite and jadeite-rich rock than has previously been assumed. Based on the results of conductivity measurements in modern subduction zones, we envision a pervasive fluid in the subduction channel that evolved from salinity levels lower than those in sea-water up to the measured values due to on-going but largely completed serpentinization in the subduction channel. The present data represent a reference marker for the subduction channel of the Rio San Juan intra-oceanic subduction zone at 30–50 km depth and after 50–60 Myr of operation.
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•Jadeitites trap ambient fluids in cold subduction channels.•Studied fluid inclusions in jadeitite are aqueous with 4.5 wt% NaCl equiv.•Precipitation- and replacement-type jadeitites have an identical range of salinity.•Fluids in the subduction channel have a salinity similar to seawater.
Slab-derived fluids play an important role in heat and material transfer in subduction zones. Dehydration and decarbonation reactions of minerals in the subducting slab have been investigated using ...phase equilibria and modeling of fluid flow. Nevertheless, direct observations of the fluid chemistry and pressure–temperature conditions of fluids are few. This report describes CO ₂-bearing saline fluid inclusions in spinel-harzburgite xenoliths collected from the 1991 Pinatubo pumice deposits. The fluid inclusions are filled with saline solutions with 5.1 ± 1.0% (wt) NaCl-equivalent magnesite crystals, CO ₂-bearing vapor bubbles, and a talc and/or chrysotile layer on the walls. The xenoliths contain tremolite amphibole, which is stable in temperatures lower than 830 °C at the uppermost mantle. The Pinatubo volcano is located at the volcanic front of the Luzon arc associated with subduction of warm oceanic plate. The present observation suggests hydration of forearc mantle and the uppermost mantle by slab-derived CO ₂-bearing saline fluids. Dehydration and decarbonation take place, and seawater-like saline fluids migrate from the subducting slab to the mantle wedge. The presence of saline fluids is important because they can dissolve more metals than pure H ₂O and affect the chemical evolution of the mantle wedge.
Sagittal otoliths, typically composed of aragonite, are frequently laid down rather as vaterite during growth in hatchery-reared fish populations. Sagittal vateritization is believed to impair ...individual hearing/balancing abilities, but the causal mechanism remains unclear. Here we experimentally demonstrated that rearing in Sr-rich water induces sagittal vateritization in the HdrR-II1 inbred strain of the Japanese rice fish,
. Both sagittae were partly vateritized in 70% of individuals subjected to the Sr
treatment (
= 10), whereas fish reared in normal tap water showed no sagittal vateritization (
= 8). Our result is consistent with the theoretical prediction that vaterite becomes thermodynamically more stable than aragonite as the Sr
concentration in solution increases. A vateritic layer develops surrounding the original aragonitic sagitta in vateritized otoliths, some of which take on a comma-like shape. Electron probe microanalysis demonstrates that the vateritized phase is characterized by lower Sr
and higher Mg
concentrations than the aragonitic phase. It is unlikely that increased environmental Sr
is responsible for the sagittal vateritization in farmed fish. However, our findings likely help to establish an
assay using
to understand the physiological process underlying the sagittal vateritization in farmed fish.
Lherzolite xenoliths containing fluid inclusions from the Ichinomegata volcano, located on the rear-arc side of the Northeast Japan arc, may be considered as samples of the uppermost mantle above the ...melting region in the mantle wedge. Thus, these fluid inclusions provide valuable information on the nature of fluids present in the sub-arc mantle. The inclusions in the Ichinomegata amphibole-bearing spinel–plagioclase lherzolite xenoliths were found to be composed mainly of CO
2
–H
2
O–Cl–S fluids. At equilibrium temperature of 920 °C, the fluid inclusions preserve pressures of 0.66–0.78 GPa, which correspond to depths of 23–28 km. The molar fraction of H
2
O and the salinity of fluid inclusions are 0.18–0.35 and 3.71 ± 0.78 wt% NaCl equivalent, respectively. These fluid inclusions are not believed to be fluids derived directly from the subducting slab, but rather fluids exsolved from sub-arc basaltic magmas that are formed through partial melting of mantle wedge triggered by slab-derived fluids.
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