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Mantle geochemistry

Big lessons from little droplets

Nature volume 436, pages 789–790 (2005)Cite this article

How does Hawaii look deep below the surface? Like viewing an object at a different magnification, studies of minuscule inclusions in volcanic rocks on the surface provide a fresh perspective on the question.

Mantle plumes are thought to be roughly elongate cylinders of rock that buoyantly rise up from deep within the Earth, manifesting themselves at the surface in features such as the Hawaiian islands and Iceland. Much attention has centred on Hawaii, because it is constructed from Earth's largest volcanoes distributed along two geochemically distinct alignments, and there is considerable debate about what these distinctions reveal about the underlying plume that feeds them. On page 837 of this issue1, Ren et al. add to that debate: they show that interpretations depend on the size of the material that is subject to chemical analysis.

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Figure 1: Models of the geochemical structure of the Hawaiian mantle plume.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, 08854, New Jersey, USA

    Claude Herzberg

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  1. Claude Herzberg
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Herzberg, C. Big lessons from little droplets. Nature 436, 789–790 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/436789b

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