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Permeability of asthenospheric mantle and melt extraction rates at mid-ocean ridges

Nature volume 462, pages 209–212 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Magmatic production on Earth is dominated by asthenospheric melts of basaltic composition that have mostly erupted at mid-ocean ridges. The timescale for segregation and transport of these melts, which are ultimately responsible for formation of the Earth’s crust, is critically dependent on the permeability of the partly molten asthenospheric mantle, yet this permeability is known mainly from semi-empirical and analogue models1,2,3,4,5,6. Here we use a high-pressure, high-temperature centrifuge, at accelerations of 400g–700g, to measure the rate of basalt melt flow in olivine aggregates with porosities of 5–12 per cent. The resulting permeabilities are consistent with a microscopic model in which melt is completely connected, and are one to two orders of magnitude larger than predicted by current parameterizations4,7. Extrapolation of the measurements to conditions characteristic8 of asthenosphere below mid-ocean ridges yields proportionally higher transport speeds. Application of these results in a model9 of porous-media channelling instabilities10 yields melt transport times of ∼1–2.5 kyr across the entire asthenosphere, which is sufficient to preserve the observed 230Th excess of mid-ocean-ridge basalts and the mantle signatures of even shorter-lived isotopes such as 226Ra (refs 5,11–14).

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Figure 1: Centrifuged high-pressure sample and principle of obtaining melt velocities.
Figure 2: Profiles of porosity versus sample height for the basaltic melt centrifuged from the olivine matrix.
Figure 3: Transport times and melt speeds below MORs.

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Acknowledgements

Discussion with G. Hirth improved this work, which was supported by ETH grant TH 20/03-2 and by SNF grant 200020-111725-1.

Author Contributions M.W.S. and N.B. designed this project and obtained its funding; the experiments and modal and grain-size analyses were performed by G.S.; the analysis of the experimental results and writing of the manuscript were done by J.A.D.C. and M.W.S. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Mineralogy and Petrology, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland,

    James A. D. Connolly, Max W. Schmidt & Giulio Solferino

  2. Institut für Geowissenschaften, Facheinheit Geophysik, J. W. Goethe Universität, Altenhöferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany,

    Nikolai Bagdassarov

Authors
  1. James A. D. Connolly
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Correspondence to Max W. Schmidt.

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Connolly, J., Schmidt, M., Solferino, G. et al. Permeability of asthenospheric mantle and melt extraction rates at mid-ocean ridges. Nature 462, 209–212 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08517

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