Mantle plumes are anomalously hot, narrow upwellings of mantle material that originate at the core-mantle boundary. As plumes rise they may form volumetrically large "heads" (~1000 km in diameter) with narrower (~100 km) "tails." Plume head melting is thought to form Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs), vast outpourings of basaltic lava (~106 km3), while plume tail melting forms linear chains of ocean island basalts (OIBs) similar the Emperor-Hawaii Seamount chain. Mantle plume derived melts indicate that these structures sample deep Earth geochemical and lithological heterogeneities. Studying plume-derived lavas can clarify important planetary-scale questions relating to the accretion of the Earth, primordial geochemical reservoirs, the fate of subducted materials, planetary differentiation, and convective mixing. / Ph. D.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77438 |
Date | 21 April 2017 |
Creators | Trela, Jarek |
Contributors | Geosciences, Gazel, Esteban, Caddick, Mark J., Herzberg, Claude T., Zhou, Ying |
Publisher | Virginia Tech |
Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Dissertation |
Format | ETD, application/pdf |
Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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