Description: A high-resolution mapping and sampling study of the Gakkel ridge was accomplished during an international ice-breaker expedition to the high Arctic and North Pole in summer 2001. For this slowest-spreading endmember of the global mid-ocean-ridge system, predictions were that magmatism should progressively diminish as the spreading rate decreases along the ridge, and that hydrothermal activity should be rare. Instead, it was found that magmatic variations are irregular, and that hydrothermal activity is abundant. A 300-kilometre-long central amagmatic zone, where mantle peridotites are emplaced directly in the ridge axis, lies between abundant, continuous volcanism in the west, and large, widely spaced volcanic centres in the east. These observations demonstrate that the extent of mantle melting is not a simple function of spreading rate: mantle temperatures at depth or mantle chemistry (or both) must vary significantly along-axis. Highly punctuated volcanism in the absence of ridge offsets suggests that first-order ridge segmentation is controlled by mantle processes of melting and melt segregation. The strong focusing of magmatic activity coupled with faulting may account for the unexpectedly high levels of hydrothermal activity observed.

Description: [1] Volcanic glasses contained in distal fallout tephras from the Izu arc volcanic front (Izu VF) provide unique perspectives on general problems of arc volcanism. Unlike cogenetic lavas, these glasses are liquid compositions where element concentrations as well as ratios have significance. Isotopic evidence and previous work show that there is no sediment melt contribution to the sources of the Izu VF tephras, and hence their trace element characteristics permit determination of the trace element contents of slab fluids. The slab fluid is a composite of metasediment (∼5% of total fluid) and metabasalt (∼95%) component fluids, and carries large ion lithophile elements (LILE) with high LILE/Th and LILE/U, and low Th and U relative to source. Except for Sr and K, the metabasalt fluid is much less enriched than the metasediment fluid, but its large relative proportions make it an important carrier of many trace elements. The metabasalt fluid has the characteristics of the arc trace element signature, obviating the need for ubiquitous involvement of sediment in arc magma genesis. The fluid component in the tephras is remarkably constant in composition over fifteen million years, and hence appears to be a robust composition that may be applicable to other convergent margins. Assuming that the metabasalt fluid is a common component, and that distribution coefficients between sediment and fluid are similar from one arc to another, composite fluid compositions can be estimated for other arcs. Differences from this composition then would likely result from a sediment melt component. Comparison to arcs with sediment melt components in their source (Marianas, eastern Aleutians) shows that partial sediment melts may be so enriched, that they can completely mask the signature of the comingling slab fluids. Hence sediment melts can easily dominate the trace element and isotopic signature of many convergent margins. Since sediment melts inherit the LILE/LILE ratios of the trench sediment, Earth's surface processes must eventually influence the compositional diversity of arcs.

Description: Studies of ocean ridge magmatism have been hampered by the difficulty in constructing time-series data over more than a few thousand years. Sediment rapidly covers newly formed ocean crust, and older rocks, even when recovered from fault scarps, cannot be dated accurately. Ridge eruptions, however, disperse pyroclastic glass over distances as far as 5 km, and these glasses have been shown to persist for thousands of years in on-ridge sediment push cores. Here we present data on such glasses from a piston core that impacted basement in much older (600 ka) sediment. The age of deposition was determined using established stratigraphic methods to date the host sediment, yielding an average sample resolution of a few thousand years and a continuous 65 k.y. time series. The new time-series data show systematic temporal variations in magma compositions related to a change to the dynamics of crustal storage, which led to greater extents of pre-eruptive differentiation. Shortly thereafter was a small but discernable shift toward more enriched primary melt compositions. These events coincide with the onset of enhanced crustal production, previously identified using seismic data and interpreted to reflect the capture of a hotspot by the ridge. These results show the long-term preservation of pyroclastic glasses and suggest that the construction of high-resolution volcanic stratigraphy over a million years or more may be possible at ocean ridges, using multiple piston cores that impact basement. Sediment-hosted glasses have the potential to transform ocean ridges from the volcanic setting with the worst time-series data to that with the best.

Description: Most published studies of olivine-hosted melt inclusions from mid-ocean ridges have been based on a single sample. Here we present a comprehensive melt inclusion study of major and trace elements from a single ocean ridge segment, the FAMOUS segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The melt inclusion dataset includes 312 olivine-hosted (Mg-number 85–92) melt inclusions from 14 samples distributed along the segment. This permits a more comprehensive assessment of the variability within melt inclusions from a single region, and of the relationship between melt inclusion and lava compositions. One recent question has been the extent to which melt inclusions truly preserve the original melt compositions, or instead are modified by late-stage processes occurring at shallow levels. In the FAMOUS inclusions, major elements have been affected by post-entrapment processes, but trace elements show no evidence of such processes, suggesting that diffusion coefficients for incompatible elements are small. Melt inclusions can be divided into three groups. (1) High-Mg inclusions are the most primitive and may potentially constrain the composition of the parental magmas that contribute to other melt inclusion and lava compositions. Although their trace element contents range from highly depleted to almost as enriched as the FAMOUS segment lavas, they are on average more depleted and the melts appear to be derived by greater extents of melting than the lavas. (2) Low-Al inclusions occur in the lower Mg-number olivines, and their major and trace element characteristics reflect mixing between high-Mg melt inclusion and lava compositions. (3) High-Al melt inclusions display Al 2 O 3 contents as high as 18·4 wt %, SiO 2 as low as 46·6 wt %, a strong depletion in the most incompatible elements and distinctively low middle to heavy rare earth element (MREE/HREE) ratios. The high Al 2 O 3 and low SiO 2 contents, as well as positive Sr anomalies in some of the high-Al melt inclusions, are best explained by assimilation of plagioclase-bearing cumulates. The trace element variability in the high-Mg melt inclusions is not consistent with a simple continuous melting column and requires pooling of near-fractional melts within the melting regime and a variable mantle source composition. Because the mean composition of these melt inclusions reflects greater extents of melting than the lavas, we propose that the melt inclusions come from the upper portions of the melting regime. Lavas, in contrast, sample the entire melting regime, including low-degree melts from the wings of the regime that are transported more directly to the surface along high-porosity channels. The high-Al, trace element ultra-depleted, low MREE/HREE melt inclusions derive from melting of a residual mantle source formed by previous melt extraction in the garnet stability field. There is a marked lack of correspondence between major and trace element variations in the melt inclusions. This may reflect a combination of processes, such as cumulate assimilation and re-equilibration of the magmas during ascent, which can reset major elements while having little effect on the trace element variations. The melt inclusions are not simply representative unpooled melts from the melting regime and they do not fully reflect the range of melt compositions contributing to the lavas. Their compositions reflect source heterogeneity as well as melting processes, and major and trace element indicators of depth of origin do not correspond. Combined comprehensive studies of lavas and melt inclusions have much more to reveal than studies based on either data source alone.