Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Electronic data suppliment for Ford 2012.zip

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  • Understanding continental crust formation and modification is a fundamental and longstanding geologic problem. Influx of mantle-derived basaltic magma and partial melting of the crust are two ways to drive crustal differentiation. This process results in a low density upper crust and denser, more refractory lower crust, creating significant and vastly different geochemical reservoirs over time. The High Lava Plains (HLP) and Northwestern Basin and Range (NWBR) in central and eastern Oregon provide an excellent example of intraplate volcanism where we can examine the beginnings of segregation of a relatively young, recently accreted crust. The origins of continental magmatism and its relationship to plate tectonics, especially away from the continental margins, are only slowly becoming revealed. The western United States is the most volcanically active part of North America during Cenozoic time, and this activity includes the enigmatic volcanism of the HLP and NWBR. Rhyolitic volcanism in the HLP and NWBR is age-progressive but in a direction that is nearly perpendicular to North American Plate motion. Despite being erupted through a similar crust and with a similar composition of mafic input, the HLP province is strongly bimodal (basalt-rhyolite) while the NWBR province exhibits a continuum of compositions. High silica rhyolites are commonplace in the HLP, with approximately a 1:1 ratio of rhyolite to basalt, even though the crust is comprised of mafic accreted terranes. Asthenospheric flow, mantle melting and crustal extension coupled with southwesterly North American plate motion explain the age-progressive volcanism of the HLP and NWBR. Differential asthenopheric counterflow and mantle upwelling created by the down-going Cascadia slab, coupled with transtensional stresses related to the rotation of the North American plate and Basin and Range extension, decreasing to the north, can produce the observed variations in rhyolite compositions and volumes in the two adjacent provinces. These differences are caused by fundamentally different petrogenetic processes that take place in the crust. In the HLP, an increase in mantle-derived magma flux into the lower crust has created low silica rhyolite via partial melt that separated, coalesced and rose buoyantly. This low silica rhyolite may erupt, solidify in the upper crust, or differentiate by fractional crystallization to produce high-iron, high-silica rhyolite containing an anhydrous phase assemblage. In the NWBR, a smaller flux of basaltic magma, coupled with greater transtension resulted in small crustal processing zones where fractional crystallization coupled with magma mixing and recharge created a wide range of compositions. Partial melting to form rhyolites was limited. These rhyolites have lower iron, and hydrous phases (biotite, amphibole) are common. These processes modify the crust in different ways, leaving a stratified crust in the HLP but a less modified crust in the NWBR. Recent geophysical and isotopic studies bear out these differences and allow for a unified, internally consistent model for both provinces, one that relies only on partial melt generation driven by current plate movements and do not require a mantle plume contribution. The bimodal volcanism of the HLP is a direct consequence of the processes that cause the gravitational differentiation of the continental crust into upper and lower units. The model for the HLP is generally applicable to other localities that have predominantly mafic crust and a similar balance of crustal transtension and mantle-derived basaltic flux. One such place is Iceland, which has strongly bimodal (basalt – rhyolite) volcanism. In areas where silicic crust has become substantially more mafic due to a high flux of intraplated basalts, such as in the bimodal Snake River Plain, the model is also applicable.
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