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Transition of Mount Etna lavas from a mantle-plume to an island-arc magmatic source

Nature volume 412, pages 900–904 (2001)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 11 April 2002

Abstract

Mount Etna lies near the boundary between two regions that exhibit significantly different types of volcanism. To the north, volcanism in the Aeolian island arc is thought to be related to subduction of the Ionian lithosphere1. On Sicily itself, however, no chemical2,3 or seismological4 evidence of subduction-related volcanism exists, and so it is thought that the volcanism—including that on Mount Etna itself—stems from the upwelling of mantle material5, associated with various surface tectonic processes1,6. But the paucity of geological evidence regarding the primary composition of magma from Mount Etna means that its source characteristics remain controversial. Here we characterize the trace-element composition of a series of lavas emitted by Mount Etna over the past 500 kyr and preserved as melt inclusions inside olivine phenocrysts. We show that the compositional change in primary magmas from Mount Etna reflects a progressive transition from a predominantly mantle-plume source to one with a greater contribution from island-arc (subduction-related) basalts. We suggest that this is associated with southward migration of the Ionian slab, which is becoming juxtaposed with a mantle plume beneath Sicily. This implies that the volcanism of Mount Etna has become more calc-alkaline, and hence more explosive, during its evolution.

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Figure 1: Sketch map of islands in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea and sample locations on Mount Etna.
Figure 2: Trace-element diagrams.
Figure 3: Plots of various ratios involving highly incompatible elements.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. C. Tanguy, A. Borgia, O. Sigmarsson, R. Cristofolini and B. Van Wyk de Vries for discussions, A. Kent for comments on the manuscript, and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy) for funding the ion microprobe that we used at CSCC (Pavia).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire “Magmas et Volcans”, Université Blaise Pascal, CNRS UMR 6524, OPGC, 5 rue Kessler, Clermont-Ferrand, 63038, France

    Pierre Schiano

  2. Laboratoire Pierre Süe, CEA CNRS UMR 9956, Centre d'Etude Nucléaire de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, 91191, France

    Roberto Clocchiatti

  3. Centro di Studio per la Cristallochimica e la Cristallografia–CNR, via Ferrata 1, Pavia, I-27100, Italy

    Luisa Ottolini

  4. Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche, Università di Catania, Corso Italia 55, Catania, I-95129, Italy

    Tiziana Busà

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  1. Pierre Schiano
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  4. Tiziana Busà
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Correspondence to Pierre Schiano.

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Schiano, P., Clocchiatti, R., Ottolini, L. et al. Transition of Mount Etna lavas from a mantle-plume to an island-arc magmatic source. Nature 412, 900–904 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35091056

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