Abstract
Volcanic hotspot islands are thought to be surface manifestations of mantle plumes that rise from the core–mantle boundary. When mantle plumes approach the surface, their mostly vertical rise must be deflected into near-horizontal flow beneath tectonic plates. This creates an opportunity to constrain their dynamics and their interactions with lithospheric plates and mid-ocean ridges. Seafloor observations have been used to propose that a focused flow in the asthenosphere transports plume heat to the nearest mid-ocean ridge, where it efficiently dissipates through formation of lithosphere. Here we present imaging results from a seismological survey of a proposed plume-to-ridge flow channel between the Réunion hotspot and the Central Indian Ridge. Rayleigh-wave tomography and shear-wave splitting confirm the presence of a channelized flow of shallow asthenosphere, eastward from the hotspot to the spreading ridge. At a larger scale, a deeper reservoir of hot asthenosphere fills vast tracts of the Indian Ocean basin east and north of Réunion Island. Its flows, decoupled from overlying lithospheres, are also directed towards the Central Indian Ridge but extend well beyond, tapped but not significantly depleted by the spreading ridge. Based on seismic and geochemical observations, we suggest that this hidden heat reservoir is generated and driven by the mantle plume, which buffers more heat near the surface than expected.
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Data availability
The authors declare that data supporting the findings of this study are freely available from the RESIF data centre (http://seismology.resif.fr, https://doi.org/10.15778/RESIF.YV2011).
The RHUM-RUM dataset (https://www.fdsn.org/networks/detail/YV_2011/) has been assigned the FDSN network code YV and is hosted and freely accessible at the French RESIF data centre (http://seismology.resif.fr). MACOMO data are archived at the IRIS DMC (http://www.iris.edu) under the FDSN network code XV (https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/XV_2011). The individual RHUM-RUM SKS splitting measurements presented in this article can be found online in the SKS splitting data base https://doi.org/10.18715/sks_splitting_database and mirrored and accessible at IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) at https://ds.iris.edu/spud/swsmeasurement. We acknowledge the GEOSCOPE network (https://doi.org/10.18715/GEOSCOPE.G) for installing and maintaining permanent stations in the Indian Ocean.
Code availability
The shear-wave splitting measurements were performed with the MATLAB-based SplitLab code available at https://github.com/IPGP/splitlab. The surface-wave tomography codes are not available online because they are tailored for laboratory work, but they can be requested by email to E.S. or S.K.
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Acknowledgements
RHUM-RUM was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche in France (project ANR-11-BS56-0013) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany (grants SI1538/2-1 and SI1538/4-1), with additional support from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique—Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (CNRS-INSU), Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (TAAF), Institut Polaire Paul Emile Victor (IPEV), Université de La Réunion and Alfred Wegener Institut (AWI). OBS were provided by DEPAS (Deutsche Geräte-Pool für Amphibische Seismologie, Germany), GEOMAR (GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel, Germany) and INSU-IPGP (Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers—Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France). K.S. was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grants SI1538/2-1 and SI1538/4-1, and by the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/ under REA grant agreement no. PCIG14-GA-2013-631104 ‘RHUM-RUM’. J.-P.M. was funded by IUF (Institut Universitaire de France). Thanks to the crews of cruises Marion Dufresne 192 and Meteor 101 and to TIDES Cost Action for organizing meetings and discussions. We thank M. Wysession for sharing MACOMO data, and C. Davy and E. Delcher for their field and instrumental help. This is IPGP contribution 4068.
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G.B., K.S., J.-R.S., A.M., E.S., S.K., F.R.F. and J.-P.M. performed the analysis of the data, G.B. and K.S. were in charge of data acquisition and pre-processing, and led the writing of the manuscript. All the authors participated in interpreting the results.
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Barruol, G., Sigloch, K., Scholz, JR. et al. Large-scale flow of Indian Ocean asthenosphere driven by Réunion plume. Nat. Geosci. 12, 1043–1049 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0479-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0479-3
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