Halogens are primarily located within surface reservoirs of the Earth; as such they have proven to be effective tracers for the identification of subducted volatiles within the mantle. Subducting lithologies exhibit a wide variety of halogen compositions, yet the mantle maintains a fairly uniform signature, suggesting halogens may be homogenized...
The submarine Amsterdam-St. Paul (ASP) Plateau, bisected by the Southeast Indian Ridge (SEIR), is a bathymetric high rising ~2 km above the surrounding seafloor that includes the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul; this excess volcanism is attributed to a mantle hot spot. We obtained new Sr, Nd, and Pb...
We have measured ³He/⁴He ratios and He and Ne concentrations on a suite of 24 basalt glasses from the neovolcanic zone of the Juan de Fuca Ridge (JdFR) from 44.6°N near the Blanco Transform up to 48.0°N on the Endeavour Segment. The helium isotope ratios exhibit a clear geographic variation,...
Extensive volcanic fields on the western Arabian Plate have erupted intermittently over the last 30 Ma following emplacement of the Afar flood basalts in Ethiopia. In an effort to better understand the origin of this volcanism in western Saudi Arabia, we analyzed ³He/⁴He, and He, CO₂ and trace element concentrations...
We report ³He/⁴He for 150 mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB) glasses from the Southeast Indian
Ridge (SEIR). Between 81°E and 101°E ³He/⁴He varies from 7.5 to 10.2 R[subscript A], encompassing more than half the
MORB range away from ocean island hot spots. Abrupt transitions are present and in one case the...
Basalts from the four southernmost segments of the subducting Chile Ridge (numbered 1-4 stepping away from the trench) display large variations in Sr, Nd, Pb, and He isotope and trace element compositions. Klein and Karsten [1995] showed that segments 1 and 3 display clear trace element evidence for recycled material...
The Amsterdam-St. Paul Plateau is bisected by the intermediate-rate spreading Southeast Indian Ridge, and numerous geophysical and tectonic anomalies arise from the interactions of the Amsterdam-St. Paul hotspot and the spreading center. The plate boundary geometry on the hotspot platform evolves rapidly (on timescales <1 Myr), off-axis volcanism is abundant,...
Hot spot–mid-ocean ridge interactions cause many of the largest structural and chemical anomalies in Earth’s ocean basins. Correlated geophysical and geochemical anomalies are widely explained by mantle plumes that deliver hot and compositionally distinct material toward and along mid-ocean ridges. Compositional anomalies are seen in trace element and isotope ratios,...
Helium isotopes are a robust geochemical tracer of a primordial mantle component in hot spot volcanism. The high ³He/⁴He (up to 35 RA, where RA is the atmospheric ³He/⁴He ratio of 1.39 X 10¯⁶) of some Hawaiian Island volcanism is perhaps the classic example. New results for picrites and basalts...
As the Galápagos hot spot is approached from the west along the Galápagos Spreading Center there are systematic increases in crustal thickness and in the K/Ti, Nb/Zr, ³He/⁴He, H₂O, and Na₂O content of lavas recovered from the spreading axis. These increases correlate with progressive transitions from rift valley to axial...
