Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Science Policy Alerts

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 7 September 1990:
Vol. 249. no. 4973, pp. 1154 - 1157
DOI: 10.1126/science.249.4973.1154
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Cumulate Xenolith in Oahu, Hawaii: Implications for Deep Magma Chambers and Hawaiian Volcanism

Gautam Sen 1 and Robert E. Jones 2

1 Geology Department, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199
2 Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024

The maximum depth at which large (>1000 km3) terrestrial mafic magma chambers can form has generally been thought to be the Moho, which occurs at a mean depth of about 35 kilometers beneath the continents and 8 kilometers beneath ocean basins. However, the presence of layers of cumulus magnesium-rich spinel and olivine and intercumulus garnet in an unusual mantle xenolith from Oahu, Hawaii, suggests that this rock is a fragment of a large magma chamber that formed at a depth of about 90 kilometers; Hawaiian shield-building magmas may pond and fractionate in such magma chambers before continuing their ascent. This depth is at or near the base of the 90-million-year-old lithosphere beneath Oahu; thus, rejuvenated stage alkalic magmas containing mantle xenoliths evidently also originate below the lithosphere.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Garnet-bearing Xenoliths from Salt Lake Crater, Oahu, Hawaii: High-Pressure Fractional Crystallization in the Oceanic Mantle.
S. Keshav, G. Sen, and D. C. Presnall (2007)
J. Petrology 48, 1681-1724
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Hawaiian mantle xenoliths and magmas: Composition and thermal character of the lithosphere.
G. Sen, S. Keshav, and M. Bizimis (2005)
American Mineralogist 90, 871-887
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Basaltic-volcano systems.
G. P. L. Walker (1993)
Geological Society, London, Special Publications 76, 3-38
   Abstract »    PDF »


ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)