Limited Mantle Hydration by Bending Faults at the Middle America Trench
dc.contributor.author | Miller, Nathaniel C. | en |
dc.contributor.author | Lizarralde, Daniel | en |
dc.contributor.author | Collins, John A. | en |
dc.contributor.author | Holbrook, W. Steven | en |
dc.contributor.author | Van Avendonk, Harm J. A. | en |
dc.contributor.department | Geosciences | en |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-07-16T15:58:03Z | en |
dc.date.available | 2021-07-16T15:58:03Z | en |
dc.date.issued | 2021-01 | en |
dc.description.abstract | Seismic anisotropy measurements show that upper mantle hydration at the Middle America Trench (MAT) is limited to serpentinization and/or water in fault zones, rather than distributed uniformly. Subduction of hydrated oceanic lithosphere recycles water back into the deep mantle, drives arc volcanism, and affects seismicity at subduction zones. Constraining the extent of upper mantle hydration is an important part of understanding many fundamental processes on Earth. Substantially reduced seismic velocities in tomography suggest that outer rise plate-bending faults provide a pathway for seawater to rehydrate the slab mantle just prior to subduction. Estimates of outer-rise hydration based on tomograms vary significantly, with some large enough to imply that, globally, subduction has consumed more than two oceans worth of water during the Phanerozoic. We found that, while the mean upper mantle wavespeed is reduced at the MAT outer rise, the amplitude and orientation of inherited anisotropy are preserved at depths >1 km below the Moho. At shallower depths, relict anisotropy is replaced by slowing in the fault-normal direction. These observations are incompatible with pervasive hydration but consistent with models of wave propagation through serpentinized fault zones that thin to 1 km below Moho. Confining hydration to fault zones reduces water storage estimates for the MAT upper mantle from similar to 3.5 wt% to <0.9 wt% H(2)0. Since the intermediate thermal structure in the similar to 24 Myr-old MAT slab favors serpentinization, limited hydration suggests that fault mechanics are the limiting factor, not temperatures. Subducting mantle may be similarly dry globally. | en |
dc.description.admin | Public domain – authored by a U.S. government employee | en |
dc.description.notes | We are grateful for the hard work and dedication of the technicians, crews, officers, and science party of R/V Langseth cruise MGL0807, who overcame many obstacles during Langseth's first science program, and also Trish Gregg and everyone aboard R/V New Horizon cruise TC2NH, which handled OBS operations. The OBS were provided and supported by the US Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool (http://www.obsip.org) facilities at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. We thank D. Shillington, S. Naif, F. Klein, and U. ten Brink for many productive discussions and J. Kluesner, C. Ruppel, A. Trehu, and J. Korenaga for reviews of this manuscript. | en |
dc.description.sponsorship | US Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool facilities at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Scripps Institution of OceanographyUniversity of California System | en |
dc.description.version | Published version | en |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020982 | en |
dc.identifier.eissn | 2169-9356 | en |
dc.identifier.issn | 2169-9313 | en |
dc.identifier.issue | 1 | en |
dc.identifier.other | e2020JB020982 | en |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10919/104189 | en |
dc.identifier.volume | 126 | en |
dc.language.iso | en | en |
dc.rights | Public Domain | en |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ | en |
dc.subject | outer‐ | en |
dc.subject | rise hydration | en |
dc.subject | upper mantle anisotropy | en |
dc.subject | upper mantle hydration | en |
dc.title | Limited Mantle Hydration by Bending Faults at the Middle America Trench | en |
dc.title.serial | Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth | en |
dc.type | Article - Refereed | en |
dc.type.dcmitype | Text | en |
dc.type.dcmitype | StillImage | en |
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