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Evolution of a Cooling Planet. Magma ocean Thick buoyant crust Melting at base Heat pipes Eclogite at base Delamination Plate instability. *prior to all this is accretional zone refining & differentiation. The Earth started out HOT!.
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Evolution of a Cooling Planet • Magma ocean • Thick buoyant crust • Melting at base • Heat pipes • Eclogite at base • Delamination • Plate instability *prior to all this is accretional zone refining & differentiation
The Earth started out HOT! • ‘Standard Models’ of geochemistry invoke a volatile-rich lower mantle, with Helium & Water leaking into the Transition Region & Upper Mantle from below • (Wasserburg, DePaolo, Allegre, O’Nions, Kellogg, Bercovici, Karato, Helffrich, Hart) • The transition Zone may be a filter, but it filters downgoing material • Volatiles were zone-refined up, and some came in as Late Veneer • Deep mantle is the dense depleted residue
STANDARD MODEL Standard Assumptions: upper mantle is homogeneous, isothermal [‘the convecting mantle’] & subsolidus; anomalous magmatism requires hot deep thermal plumes from a deep Thermal Boundary Layer (TBL)
UPPER MANTLE (basalt, peridotite, eclogite, kimberlite) Basalt, eclogite, harzburgite & magmas are less dense than lower mantle; lower mantle is dense residue of differentiation
Rocks and minerals arranged by density: crust & upper mantle • delaminates when crust > 50 km thick • warmer than MORB
Part of accretional differentiation is irreversible • The buoyant and volatile products of early differentiation are excluded upwards (radial zone refining) • The dense residues (restites) get trapped at depth as pressure increases and coefficient of thermal expansion decreases • Layers that differ enough in intrinsic density & viscosity cannot be mixed back
Fertile patches in upper mantle are subducted seamounts etc. & delaminated lower continetal crust=melting anomalies
The transition zone is a crust-slab-water filter but it filters from above, not below. Most recycled material bottoms out above 650-km depth
Ponding of eclogite PREM is Denser than pyrolite Density crossover
ECLOGITE CAN BE BROUGHT BACK UP BY A VARIETY OF MECHANISMS ___ - - - - - - - - - Buoyancy, melting, entrainment, displacement These should NOT be called ‘plumes’, e.g.’splash plumes’!
There are many things in the mantle other than old slabs • Delaminated lithosphere & crust • Cumulates • Trapped melts • Young plate, subducted ridges… • If these differ from ‘normal’ mantle by more than ~3% and are large (~10 km) they will settle to various depths • The ‘convecting mantle’ is stratified and blobby • Some of these can cause non-plume melting anomalies
DENSITY & SHEAR VELOCITY density STABLE STRATIFICATION Density Vs 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 eclogite magma
Is there any evidence for a blobby laminated mantle? • Plenty! • reflections, conversions, scatterers, low-velocity zones… • Mafic blobs at depths of neutral buoyancy or trapped at phase changes have a chance to warm up and can be the source of melting anomalies
Phase changesV V V 410 520 650 Chemical boundaries Chemical discontinuities & blobs Phase changes are flat and stack-up. Chemical boundaries & blobs are variable depth.
Low-velocity zone atop the 410-kmseismic discontinuity in thenorthwestern United StatesTeh-Ru Alex Song, Don. V. Helmberger & Stephen P. Grand 400-km
Lower mantle (LM) is denser than pyrolite; therefore eclogite can be trapped in TZ LM is (depleted, refractory, residual; formed during accretion) Perovskite is too dense Pyrolite & low-FeO is too light K.Lee et al. Lower mantle is chondritic minus {volatiles-crust-upper mantle}, e.g.SiO2-rich
THE ALTERNATE TO A TURBULENT WELL-STIRRED MANTLE IS ONE OF NEUTRAL DENSITY
Mantle stratification • irregular chemical discontinuities expected • difficult to see in tomography • can be seen in receiver functions
In a petrologically realistic planet the products of differentiation are not mixed back in; the mantle becomes stratified (pink and red are mafic rocks & melts)
Geochemical & geodynamic models are dominated by simplistic 1 & 2 layer models • The idea of a homogeneous (‘the convecting’) mantle is based on low resolution techniques (global tomography, sampling at ridges, 2D Boussinesq convection simulations) • Higher resolution (receiver functions, reflections, xenoliths, inclusions, seamounts) methods paint a different picture
NMORB,DMORB,EMORB,TMORB,OIB,AOB,DMM,EM,HIMU,DUPAL,LONU,PHEM,FOZO…NMORB,DMORB,EMORB,TMORB,OIB,AOB,DMM,EM,HIMU,DUPAL,LONU,PHEM,FOZO… • Kimberlites, carbonatites, abyssal peridotites, continental mantle…are underappreciated sources of enrichment • Eclogites come in many flavors and densities • The mantle is not just 1 or 2 reservoirs or components
WHEN DID PLATE TECTONICS BEGIN? When did water get into the mantle?
Is Sea Ice Tectonics ‘Plate Tectonics’? Sea ice has ‘plates’, collisions (pressure ridges), break-ups (leads), rifts, sutures, rapid motions, shallow underthrusting when thin…but no subduction tectonics
(Gpa) Cold eclogite can be negatively buoyant but it can have low shear wave velocities & low melting point
Old oceanic plate is likely to sink deeper than subducted seamount chains & younger plates
QUANTATIVE & STATISTICAL TOMOGRAPHIC INTERPRETATIONS DO NOT SUPPORT WHOLE MANTLE CONVECTION • Decorrelation of past subduction reconstructions and tomography(Scrivner,Ray, Wen,Anderson,Becker,Boschi) • Change in spatial patterns (Tanimoto) • Change in spectral characteristics (Gu,Dziewonski) • Flat slabs (Zhou,Fukao)
Tri-partite mantle Density variability Sinking & rising blobs DYNAMIC ISOLATED SLUGGISH DYNAMIC
The large “megaplumes” under s.Africa and Pacific are cold & dense!
Buoyant & high velocity Dense but low velocity
Dense Domes Not Megaplumes
The pyrolite model has problems; A transition zone that is slower than dry pyrolite & unacceptably low temperatures in deep mantle. A denser lower mantle where velocities increase with depth less fast than pyrolite would alleviate the problems. This would require (1) a change in transition zone composition (eclogite) (2) a gradual change in physical state of the lower mantle, e.g., a superadiabatic temperature gradient (3) more SiO2,FeO than upper mantle (chondritic Mg/Si minus crust and upper mantle)
SUBDUCTION?WATER INTO MANTLE?ECLOGITE FORMATION?THIN OCEANIC CRUST?KIMBERLITES?DELAMINATION?
Complications in lower mantle • Post-perovskite phases of pyroxenes • Low-spin transitions • Iron partitioning into isolated phases • Pressure lowers expansivity & raises conductivity • Radiative transfer • Chemical layers and megablobs
Asthenospheric return flow vectors, with entrained mafic blobs, explain ‘hotspot’ tracks and relative motions between ‘hotspots’
MORB-eclogite at high pressure The fate of eclogite depends on composition.MORB is SiO2-rich and becomes stishovite-rich & dense