《Mantle melting beneath the Southwest Indian Ridgesignals from clinopyroxene in abyssal peridotites》.pdfVIP

Acta Oceanol. Sin., 2013, Vol. 32, No. 12, P. 50–59 DOI: 10.1007/s13131-013-0387-0 E-mail: hyxbe@263.net Mantle melting beneath the Southwest Indian Ridge: signals from clinopyroxene in abyssal peridotites 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 WANG Wei , CHU Fengyou *, ZHU Jihao , DONG Yanhui , YU Xing , CHEN Ling , LI Zhenggang 1The Second Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Hangzhou 310012, China Received 17 May 2013; accepted 16 August 2013 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstracts The mineral chemistry and texture of clinopyroxenes in peridotite from the Kingkong tectonic zone of the Southwest Indian Ridge segment in an effort to constrain mantle melting beneath this slow-spreading ridge are reported. There are three types of clinopyroxenes in the abyssal peridotites: coarse-grained, intergranu- lar and exsolved. The compositional variations among these three types suggest that the coarse-grained clinopyroxene is a mantle-derived source. The Al, Na and Ti contents and the Na/Ti ratio of the coarse- grained clinopyroxene may be used to monitor the degree of partial melting, combined with the contradis- tinction with Spinel Cr#, which is calculated to be between 7.9% and 14.9%, and may represent low degrees of melting in the global ocean ridge system. The along-axis compositional variations in the coarse-grained clinopyroxene suggest that the degree of partial melting is primarily controlled by the transform faults on both sides of the ridge. Nonetheless, the northwestern side of the ridge may be affected by a hypothesised detachment fault as documented by the calculated P-T conditions. Simultaneously high Na and low Ti con- tents in the coarse-grained clinopyroxene points to mantle heterogeneities along the ridge axis.