RT Journal Article
T1 Subduction of young oceanic plates : a numerical study with application to aborted thermal‐chemical plumes
A1 Blanco Quintero, Idael Francisco
A1 Gerya, Taras V.
A1 García Casco, Antonio
A1 Castro Dorado, Antonio
AB We investigated numerical models of initiation and subsequent evolution of subduction of young (10-30 Myr) oceanic lithosphere. Systematic numerical experiments were carried out by varying the age of the subducting plate (10, 12.5, 15, 17.5, 20, 25 and 30 Myr), the rate of induced convergence (2, 4 and 5 cm/yr) and the degree of hydration (0 and 2 wt% H(2)O) of the pre-existing weak oceanic fracture zone along which subduction is initiated. Despite the prescribed plate forcing, spontaneously retreating oceanic subduction with a pronounced magmatic arc and a backarc basin was obtained in a majority of the experiments. It was also found that the younger age of oceanic lithosphere results in more intense dehydration and partial melting of the slab during and after the induced subduction initiation due to the shallow dispositions of the isotherms. Partial melting of the subducted young crust may create thermal-chemical instabilities (cold plumes) that ascend along the slab-mantle interface until they either freeze at depth or detach from the slab and penetrate the upper plate lithosphere contributing to the nucleation and growth of a volcanic arc. Freezing of the plumes in the slab-mantle interface is favored by subduction of very young lithosphere (i.e., 10 Myr) at moderate rate (4 cm/yr) of convergence. Such aborted plumes may correspond to Cretaceous partially melted MORB-derived slab material and associated adakitic tonalitic-trondhjemitic rocks crystallized at ca. 50 km depth in the slab-mantle interface and exhumed in a subduction channel (serpentinite melanges) in eastern Cuba.
PB American Geophysical Union
SN 1525-2027
YR 2011
FD 2011
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/13310
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/13310
LA eng
NO Blanco Quintero, I.F., Gerya, T.V., García Casco, A., Castro Dorado, A.: "Subduction of young oceanic plates : a numerical study with application to aborted thermal‐chemical plumes".  	Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Vol. 12, n. 10, (2011). DOI: 10.1029/2011GC003717
NO We appreciated constructive comments by Erin Burkett and an anonymous reviewer and recommendations of Editor T. Becker. Blanco-Quintero would like to thank E. Sizova and Y. Mishin for provision of visualization routines, basic instructions and help during his stay in the ETH. We appreciate financial support from Spanish MCINN project CGL2009-12446 and support from Swiss National Science Foundation research grants 200020_129487, 200020_126832, 200021_113672/1, 200021_116381/1, 4D-Adamello, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology research grants ETH-06 09-2, ETH-08 07-2 and Crystal2Plate program to TVG. This is a contribution to IGCP-546 "Subduction zones of the Caribbean." Blanco-Quintero is supported by grant AP2005-5258 from the "Programa de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario" of the Spanish Ministry of Education.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 30 may 2026