Researchers look to hydrothermal vents for clues into the movement of Earth’s lower crust
A deep-sea vent, or black smoker, on the East Pacific Rise. Researchers use new modeling to examine the locations of vents like this one. Credit: W.R. Normak
Source: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems

Along fast-spreading mid-ocean ridges, elongated lenses of partially molten material are the major source of magma for forging oceanic crust. These axial melt lenses are located between a slice of brittle, upper crust dominated by hydrothermal circulation and pliable, lower crust underlain by a zone of partially molten material. Although the transfer of heat and material between these hydrothermal and magmatic layers controls crust formation, geochemical cycling, and other important processes, most thermal models of these systems do not take their interconnectivity into account.

New modeling offers insight into the behavior of hydrothermal vents
A conceptual model of magmatic and hydrothermal convective couplings at fast-spreading ridges. The lower crust convects along the axis as a viscous fluid, forming 4- to 5-kilometer-long “wheel rims” in a narrow axial domain along the axial melt lens (AML). Along-axis hydrothermal cells (in gray) are strongly coupled to magmatic ones. Hydrothermal upflows, located above magmatic upflows, transport latent heat due to melt crystallization in the AML. Additional heat can come from the cooling of the dyke and pillow sections above the AML and/or from the cooling of the whole gabbro section across the axis (orange arrows). The Moho is the Mohorovičić discontinuity, the boundary between Earth’s crust and its mantle. Credit: Fabrice Fontaine and Mathilde Cannat

To explore these potential couplings, Fontaine et al. developed conceptual and numerical models that simulate the interactions between these two layers along a narrow (<1 kilometer) corridor that runs parallel to the ridge. Within this strip, the team assumed that the average melt content of the lower crust is relatively high and that the melt is heterogeneously distributed. By allowing for a large reduction in viscosity in the zones with the most melt, these assumptions facilitate the formation of “wheel rim” circulation cells within the lower crust that can then interact with hydrothermal circulation in the brittle upper crust.

The team’s models indicate that convection is possible in a gabbro—an intrusive igneous rock—with an average melt content of 10%. Further, in such a scenario, the resulting interactions between the hydrothermal and magmatic layers within the corridor can form circulation cells that are 4 to 5 kilometers wide. In the simulations, the couplings between the two layers created zones of hydrothermal upflow directly above upflowing magma plumes, the spacing of which was comparable to the distances between high-temperature hydrothermal vent fields observed along the East Pacific and south East Pacific rises.

Although compatible with the “gabbro-glacier” model, in which the lower crust crystallizes entirely within the axial melt lens, the authors’ hypothesis that the lower crust is convecting beneath mid-ocean ridges also raises the possibility that the accretion of the lower crust may occur in two stages, first actively in the convecting axial corridor and then passively in the diverging plates. As the first attempt to couple models of hydrothermal circulation with magma chamber convection, this study represents an important step in the development of a comprehensive model that can simulate the detailed field observations made along Earth’s mid-ocean ridges. (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GC006737, 2017)

—Terri Cook, Freelance Writer

Citation:

Cook, T. (2017), Is the lower crust convecting beneath mid-ocean ridges?, Eos, 98, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO082623. Published on 02 October 2017.

Text © 2017. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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