Tag: Alps

Brittle-ductile deformation in subduction zones

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Almenning, Norway. The red-brown mineral is ga...
Eclogite: the red-brown mineral is garnet, omphacite is green and there is some white quartz.(credit: Kevin Walsh via Wikipedia)

The ultra-dense form of basalt, eclogite made from mainly garnet and a strange high-pressure, low-temperature pyroxene (omphacite) that forms from plagioclase and some of the basalt’s ferromagnesian minerals, is possibly the most important rock there is. Without the basalt to eclogite transition that takes place when ocean-floor is subducted the density of the lithosphere would be insufficient to pull more ocean floor to destruction and maintain the planetary circulation otherwise known as plate tectonics. Since the transition involves the formation of anhydrous eclogite from old, cold and wet basalt water is driven upwards into the mantle wedge that lies over subduction zones. The encourages partial melting which creates andesite magmas and island arcs, the ultimate source of the Earth’s continental crust.

Despite being cold and rigid, subducted oceanic lithosphere somehow manages to be moved en masse, showing its track by earthquakes down to almost 700 km below the Earth’s surface.  A major ophiolite in the Western Alps on the Franco-Italian border escaped complete loss to the mantle by rebounding upwards after being subducted and metamorphosed under high-P, Low-T condition when the Alps began to form. So the basaltic crustal unit is eclogite and that preserves a petrographic  record of what actually happened as it descended (Angiboust, S. et al. 2012. Eclogite breccia in a subducted ophiolite: A record of intermediate depth earthquakes? Geology, v.  40, p. 707-710). The French geologists found breccias consisting of gabbroic eclogite blocks set in a matrix of serpentinite and talc. The blocks themselves are breccias too, with clasts of eclogite mylonite set in fine-grained lawsonite-bearing eclogite. The relationships in the breccias point to possibly earthquake-related processes, grinding and fracturing basalt as it was metamorphosed: an essentially brittle process, yet the shearing that forms mylonites does seem reminiscent of ductile deformation too.

The deformation seems to have been at the middle level of oceanic crust where oceanic basalt lavas formed above cumulate gabbro, their plutonic equivalents. Yet much deformation was also at the gabbro-serpentinite or crust-mantle boundary, where water loss from serpentine may have helped lubricate some of the processes. Clearly the Monviso ophiolite will soon become a place to visit for geophysicists as well as metamorphic petrologists.

Bouncing back from the deep

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eclogite
Eclogite from Norway. Image by kevinzim via Flickr

Because the average density of the rocks making up the continental crust is about 2.7 t m-3 while that of the mantle is greater than 3.0 t m-3 it might seem as though continents cannot be subducted. Indeed, that was one of the first principles of plate tectonics, which would account for continental crust dating back to 4000 Ma, whereas there is no oceanic crust older than about 150 Ma. In the southern foothills of the Alps in Piemonte, Italy is a site which refutes the hypothesis in a stunning fashion. The minor ski resort of Monte Mucrone is backed by cliffs in what to all appearances is a common-or-garden granite: it even seems to contain phenocrysts of plagioclase feldspar. Microscopic examination of the megacrysts reveals them to be made up of a complex intergrowth between jadeite, a high-pressure sodic pyroxene, and quartz. This is exactly what should form if albite, the sodium-rich kind of plagioclase feldspar, if it descended to depths over 70 km below the surface, i.e. to mantle depths.

Monte Mucrone proves that continental materials can be subducted, but also reveals that these granites popped back up again when the forces of subduction were relieved at the end of the Alpine orogeny. Other examples have since turned up, but few so spectacular as continental rocks from Switzerland (Herwartz, D. et al. 2011. Tracing two orogenic cycles in one eclogite sample by Lu-Hf garnet chronometry. Nature Geoscience, v. 4, p. 178-183). The Adula nappe of the Swiss Lepontine Alps consists of granitoid gneisses and metasediments of continental affinities, associated with mafic and ultramafic metamorphic rocks. The mafic rocks include eclogites typical of high-pressure, low-temperature metamorphism characteristic of subduction. Their minerals record formation temperatures around 680°C at a depth of more than more than 80 km. Eclogites are beautiful green and red rocks containing high-pressure omphacite pyroxene and pyrope garnet. Garnets generally contain abundant rare-earth elements especially those with the highest atomic numbers. One of these is lutetium (Lu) that has a radioactive isotope 176Lu with a half-life of 3.78×1010 years to yield a daughter isotope of hafnium 176Hf; garnets can be dated using this method. Garnets are frequently zoned, and the Adula eclogites clearly show several generations of zonation. Zoning can form as metamorphic conditions change, so in itself is not unusual, but dating different generations is. The German team from the Universities of Bonn, Cologne and Münster found that the garnets defined two distinct isochrons, one of Variscan age of just over 330 Ma, the other Alpine around 38 Ma. Clearly the pre-Variscan crust (probably once part of the African continent) had been subducted twice but had wrested itself clear of the mantle’s clutches on both occasions, each time remaining more or less intact. One idea that stems from this coincidence is that the Variscan mountain belt that formed at the earlier subduction zone subsequently split at its high P – low T core, so that the eclogites lay at a new continental margin and could suffer the same extreme compression when new subduction began there.

It also turns out that the region in which  Monte Mucrone lies, the Sesia zone of the Western Alps, also records a double whammy of continental subduction, but a repetition that occurred during the early events of the  Alpine orogeny (Rubatto, D. et al. 2011. Yo-yo subduction recorded by accessory minerals in the Italian Western Alps. Nature Geoscience, v. 4, p. 338-342). The team of Australian, Swiss and Italian geologists focused on the P-T record preserved in zoned garnets, allanites and zircons and evidence for two generation of white micas in eclogites and blueschists. Backed by U-Pb dating of zircon and allanite zones, the authots uncovered two episodes of deep subduction separated by period of rapid exhumation over the period between 79 to 65 Ma ago. The double subduction took place while the African plate converged obliquely with Eurasia; a strike-slip configuration that probably resulted in large-scale switches from compression to extension.

See also: Bruekner, H.K. 2011. Double-dunk tectonics. Nature Geoscience, v. 4, p. 136-138