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High water content of arc magmas recorded in cumulates from subduction zone lower crust

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 501–508 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Magmatic volatiles (for example, water) are abundant in arc melts and exert fundamental controls on magma evolution, eruption dynamics and the formation of economic ore deposits. To constrain the H2O content of arc magmas, most studies have relied on measuring extrusive products and mineral-hosted melt inclusions. However, these methods have inherent limitations that obfuscate the full range of H2O in arc magmas. Here, we report secondary-ion mass spectrometry measurements of volatile (H2O, F, P, S, Cl) abundances in lower-crustal cumulate minerals from the Kohistan palaeo-arc (northwestern Pakistan) and determine H2O abundances of melts from which the cumulates crystallized. Pyroxenes retained magmatic H2O abundances and record damp (less than 1 wt% H2O) to hydrous (up to 10 wt% H2O) primitive melts. Subsequent crystal fractionation led to formation of super-hydrous melts with approximately 12–20 wt% H2O, predicted petrologically yet virtually absent from the melt-inclusion record. Porphyry copper deposits are probably a natural eventuality of fluid exsolution from super-hydrous melts, corroborating a growing body of evidence.

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Fig. 1: Clinopyroxene H2O abundances plotted against major-element compositions.
Fig. 2: Kohistan equilibrium melt H2O abundances compared to arc magma literature.
Fig. 3: Chilas clinopyroxene H2O concentrations plotted against trace-element concentrations with various geochemical affinities.
Fig. 4: Crystallization models for Chilas and Jijal.
Fig. 5: Jijal crystallization model.

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Data availability

All data that support the findings of this study are presented herein or cited in the text and Methods. Arc melt-inclusion data for Fig. 5b were downloaded from the GEOROC Database (http://georoc.mpch-mainz.gwdg.de/georoc/) on 24 June 2020 as a precompiled file MELT_INCLUSIONS.csv and sorted. Geochemical data from this study available at PetDB, https://doi.org/10.26022/IEDA/112279.

Code availability

Code used in the generation of figures is available by request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Monteleone and N. Chatterjee for their technical expertise on the Cameca 1280 at the Northeast National Ion Microprobe Facility at WHOI and electron microprobe at MIT, respectively. We thank S. Parman, W. J. Collins and R. Loucks for their comments on previous versions of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MIT-WHOI Joint Program, Marine Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    B. M. Urann

  2. Geology and Geophysics Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    B. M. Urann & V. Le Roux

  3. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA

    B. M. Urann

  4. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    O. Jagoutz

  5. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    O. Müntener

  6. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    M. D. Behn

  7. Geosciences Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    E. J. Chin

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Contributions

B.M.U. conceived the study. B.M.U. and V.L.R. collected and interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. O.J. and O.M. provided samples, data and geochemical models. B.M.U., V.L.R., M.D.B. and E.J.C. acquired financial support. All authors contributed to editing the manuscript. Funding for this study was supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Venture Fund to B.M.U., NSF awards EAR-P&G #1839128 and EAR-P&G/Geophysics #1855302 to V.L.R. and EAR-18-55430 to M.D.B. and E.J.C. V.L.R. also acknowledges the support from the Visiting Scholar at SCIENCE programme at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. B.M.U. also acknowledges continued support from NSF OCE Post-doctoral Research Fellow grant (#2126559).

Corresponding author

Correspondence to B. M. Urann.

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Peer review information

Nature Geoscience thanks Stephen Parman, William Collins and Robert Loucks for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Rebecca Neely, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Sample descriptions, analytical techniques, partition coefficient calculations, crystal fractionation model details, crystallization correction, inter-mineral partitioning, additional figures and analytical calibration curves.

Supplementary Table 1

Sample locations, pressure and temperature estimates.

Supplementary Table 2

Volatile abundances by phase (SIMS).

Supplementary Table 3

Chilas modal abundances.

Supplementary Table 4

Volatile- and major-element analyses of individual measurements.

Supplementary Table 5

Clinopyroxene and garnet trace-element abundances.

Supplementary Table 6

Equilibrium crystallization model (Chilas).

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Urann, B.M., Le Roux, V., Jagoutz, O. et al. High water content of arc magmas recorded in cumulates from subduction zone lower crust. Nat. Geosci. 15, 501–508 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00947-w

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