Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Sensitivity of teleseismic body waves to mineral texture and melt in the mantle beneath a mid-ocean ridge
- Evidence for accumulated melt beneath the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- An analysis of variations in isentropic melt productivity
- A review of melt migration processes in the adiabatically upwelling mantle beneath oceanic spreading ridges
- Rift-plume interaction in the North Atlantic
- The ultrafast East Pacific Rise: instability of the plate boundary and implications for accretionary processes
- Seafloor eruptions and evolution of hydrothermal fluid chemistry
- Controls on the physics and chemistry of seafloor hydrothermal circulation
- Where are the large hydrothermal sulphide deposits in the oceans?
- Sea water entrainment and fluid evolution within the TAG hydrothermal mound: evidence from analyses of anhydrite
- Thermocline penetration by buoyant plumes
- Crustal accretion and the hot vent ecosystem
- Biocatalytic transformations of hydrothermal fluids
- Index
A review of melt migration processes in the adiabatically upwelling mantle beneath oceanic spreading ridges
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Sensitivity of teleseismic body waves to mineral texture and melt in the mantle beneath a mid-ocean ridge
- Evidence for accumulated melt beneath the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge
- An analysis of variations in isentropic melt productivity
- A review of melt migration processes in the adiabatically upwelling mantle beneath oceanic spreading ridges
- Rift-plume interaction in the North Atlantic
- The ultrafast East Pacific Rise: instability of the plate boundary and implications for accretionary processes
- Seafloor eruptions and evolution of hydrothermal fluid chemistry
- Controls on the physics and chemistry of seafloor hydrothermal circulation
- Where are the large hydrothermal sulphide deposits in the oceans?
- Sea water entrainment and fluid evolution within the TAG hydrothermal mound: evidence from analyses of anhydrite
- Thermocline penetration by buoyant plumes
- Crustal accretion and the hot vent ecosystem
- Biocatalytic transformations of hydrothermal fluids
- Index
Summary
We review physical and chemical constraints on the mechanisms of melt extraction from the mantle beneath mid-ocean ridges. Compositional constraints from MORB and abyssal peridotite are summarized, followed by observations of melt extraction features in the mantle, and constraints from the physical properties of partially molten peridotite. We address two main issues. (1) To what extent is melting ‘nearfractional’, with low porosities in the source and chemical isolation of ascending melt? To what extent are other processes, loosely termed reactive flow, important in MORB genesis? (2) Where chemically isolated melt extraction is required, does this occur mainly in melt-filled fractures or in conduits of focused porous flow?
Reactive flow plays an important role, but somewhere in the upwelling mantle melting must be ‘near fractional’, with intergranular porosities less than 1%, and most melt extraction must be in isolated conduits. Two porosity models provide the best paradigm for this type of process. Field relationships and geochemical data show that replacive dunites mark conduits for focused, chemically isolated, porous flow of mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB) in the upwelling mantle. By contrast, pyroxenite and gabbro dikes are lithospheric features; they do not represent conduits for melt extraction from the upwelling mantle. Thus, preserved melt extraction features do not require hydrofracture in the melting region. However, field evidence does not rule out hydrofracture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mid-Ocean RidgesDynamics of Processes Associated with the Creation of New Oceanic Crust, pp. 67 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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