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Geochemistry

Neon signs mark Australian plume

Nature volume 388, pages 127–129 (1997)Cite this article

Mantle plumes are among the most spectacular processes that generate magmas at the surface of the Earth. They are giant upwellings of hot material from deep in the mantle, probably from below the convective mantle region that drives plate tectonics1. Plumes produce long volcanic chains, such as the Hawaii-Emperor chain; and they are thought to hit the lithosphere eventually, to form large continental flood-basalts, such as the Deccan and the Ethiopian traps, over just a million years or so. These plumes participate in some way in the building of the continental crust, yet for many continental volcanic provinces, the geochemistry does not provide clear evidence for the existence of a plume. Matsumoto et al., on page 162 of this issue2, describe a new geochemical tool that has allowed them to detect a mantle plume under Australia.

Why are they hard to detect? If plumes originate from a deep region, they should be clearly ‘primitive’ in their composition. Unfortunately, the lavas produced are not made of primitive material; instead they appear to come from mixing between the upper mantle and recycled oceanic or continental crust1. In addition, melts and fluids derived from a plume head are modified by interactions with the continental lithosphere and the underlying mantle, so initial compositions can be difficult to identify using classical geochemical tools.

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Figure 1: Three isotopes of neon point to different mantle origins.

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  1. Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques, 15 Rue Notre-Dame des Pauvres, BP 20, Vandoeuvre ls Nancy Cedex, 54501, France

    Bernard Marty

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  1. Bernard Marty
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Marty, B. Neon signs mark Australian plume. Nature 388, 127–129 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40524

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