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Letter

Nature Geoscience 2, 509–513 (1 July 2009) | doi:10.1038/ngeo550

The role of magma injection in localizing black-smoker activity

William S. D. Wilcock , Emilie E. E. Hooft , Douglas R. Toomey , Paul R. McGill , Andrew H. Barclay , Debra S. Stakes & Tony M. Ramirez

Black-smoker hydrothermal systems at mid-ocean ridges are often driven by heat loss from a crustal magma chamber, but black-smoker systems have not been detected above all magma chambers. The high fluxes of heat recorded at black-smoker systems require a thin, metre-scale conductive boundary layer at the top of the magma chamber, separating hydrothermal fluids from magma.