Forty years of plume research - p813

doi:10.1038/ngeo1348

Mantle dynamics drive the formation of ocean islands and seamounts in the interior of oceanic plates. Yet the mechanisms for generating these volcanic edifices differ from chain to chain, and their material can be generated at a variety of depths.

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Mantle plumes persevere - pp816 - 817

Anthony A. P. Koppers

doi:10.1038/ngeo1334

The ocean floor is littered with hundreds of thousands of mostly extinct volcanoes. The origin of at least some of these seamounts seems to rest with mantle plumes.

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Geodynamics: Christmas recycling - pp823 - 824

Sally A. Gibson

doi:10.1038/ngeo1337

The mechanisms for forming the abundant volcanic islands on ocean floors are debated. The geochemical signature of volcanic rocks from the northeast Indian Ocean suggests that seamounts there formed from melting recycled ancient continental rocks.

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Role of the deep mantle in generating the compositional asymmetry of the Hawaiian mantle plume - pp831 - 838

Dominique Weis, Michael O. Garcia, J. Michael Rhodes, Mark Jellinek & James S. Scoates

doi:10.1038/ngeo1328

Volcanoes formed above the Hawaiian mantle plume exhibit a striking contrast in the geochemical characteristics of the lavas erupted at the northern Kea compared with the southern Loa volcanoes. Isotopic data show that these trends have persisted for more than 5 million years and may mirror compositional heterogeneities in the deep mantle.

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Geochemical zoning of volcanic chains associated with Pacific hotspots - pp874 - 878

Shichun Huang, Paul S. Hall & Matthew G. Jackson

doi:10.1038/ngeo1263

Lavas erupted from volcanoes in the north of the Hawaiian volcanic island chain have a different geochemical signature from those in the south. Analysis of the geochemistry of lavas erupted in the Samoan and Marquesas volcanic chains reveals similar trends, implying that the lowermost mantle beneath the southern Pacific is isotopically enriched.

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A deep mantle origin for the primitive signature of ocean island basalt - pp879 - 882

Frédéric Deschamps, Edouard Kaminski & Paul J. Tackley

doi:10.1038/ngeo1295

Seismic data have identified large-scale compositional heterogeneities in Earth's deep mantle, but their origin is debated. Numerical modelling demonstrates that seismological and geochemical constraints on the character of these heterogeneities can be satisfied if they are composed of primitive material formed early in Earth's history.

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Origin of Indian Ocean seamount province by shallow recycling of continental lithosphere - pp883 - 887

K. Hoernle, F. Hauff, R. Werner, P. van den Bogaard, A. D. Gibbons, S. Conrad & R. D. Müller

doi:10.1038/ngeo1331

The origin of the Christmas Island Seamount Province in the northeast Indian Ocean is enigmatic. Radiometric dating and isotopic analysis of volcanic rocks from the seamounts imply that they were derived from the recycling of continental lithosphere and brought to the surface at a mid-ocean ridge.

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