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Earth science

Prospecting for hotspot roots

Nature volume 396, pages 212–213 (1998)Cite this article

Oceanic islands commonly form linear chains with progressively increasing age away from the active region, reflecting nearly stationary ‘hotspots’ beneath the moving lithospheric plate. These hotspots are believed to be produced by upwelling mantle plumes formed from instabilities at a hot thermal boundary layer in the Earth's mantle, but the depth of origin of mantle plumes has long been debated.

On pages 251 and 255 of this issue, the seismologists Helmberger et al.1 and Russell et al. 2 propose that they have identified the roots of the Iceland and Hawaiian hotspots at the core-mantle boundary, some 2,900 km beneath the Earth's surface. Their results are notable because although some hotspots may reflect shallow melting anomalies rather than a deeply rooted mantle plume, Iceland and Hawaii are the two classic hotspots that could plausibly represent continuing upwelling from the core-mantle boundary. These hotspots are long-lived, erupt large volumes of magma, and have distinctive geochemical signatures (in particular a high ratio of 3He to 4He, which is interpreted as 3He from an undegassed region of the mantle).

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Figure 1: Summary of the evidence from which Helmberger et al. 1 and Russell et al.2 infer that the origins of the Iceland and Hawaii mantle plumes lie at the core-mantle boundary.

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  1. The and is currently visiting the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Broad Branch Road, Washington, 5241, 20015, DC, USA

    Cecily J. Wolfe

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  1. Cecily J. Wolfe
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Wolfe, C. Prospecting for hotspot roots. Nature 396, 212–213 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/24258

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