EGU2020-5825

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-5825
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Deconvolving weathering and provenance in the composition of the

modern and ancient continental crust
Alex Lipp1, Oliver Shorttle2,3, Frank Syvret4, Gareth Roberts1, and Weathering Intensity Working
Group, Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoenvironments Project5
1
Imperial College London, Earth Sciences, UK (agl18@ic.ac.uk)
2
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
3
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK
4
Bullard Laboratories, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
5
Department of Geological Sciences, Stanford University, USA

The volume and composition of Earth's earliest continental crust is a matter of ongoing debate,
but is an essential component of solid-Earth evolution, relating to mantle dynamics and the origin
of plate tectonics. The isotopic composition of titanium within sedimentary rocks, a suggested
proxy for protolith composition, suggests the early emergence of an evolved continental crust.
Other geochemical proxies such as Ni/Co and Cr/Zn ratios suggest a more mafic early crust.
Important to understanding the differences between these proxy-based interpretations of crustal
growth and composition is the mechanism of crustal chemical evolution. Two key processes may
occur: weathering, whereby cations are selectively removed from the continents and transported
to the oceans; and igneous differentiation. Resolving these processes is hampered by the ability
to deconvolve their compositional effects. To overcome this, we derive a predictive and invertible
model of sedimentary major-element composition that reconstructs protolith composition, and
hence that of the crust, whilst accounting for the effect of weathering.

We compile a dataset of sedimentary rock, river sediment, soil, and igneous rock compositions. By
applying principal component analysis to the log-ratio transformed compositional dataset we
show that any composition can be well described by considering just two linear vectors of igneous
evolution and weathering. We thus define a model for sedimentary composition as a linear
combination of these two processes, which allows us to undo the compositional effect of
 weathering to reconstruct the major element composition of protoliths and thereby average
upper continental crust through time.

We find that the major-element composition of the modern upper continental crust has been
modified by weathering relative to pristine igneous rocks. We calculate the amount of each
element that must be lost to sufficiently modify the crustal composition. By extrapolating modern
weathering rates over the age of the crust we conclude that a significant amount of weathering
restite has likely been subducted into the mantle indicating a crust-to-mantle recycling rate of
1.47 ± 1.00 ×1013kg yr-1. Secondly we apply our model to the extensive dataset of sedimentary
rocks compiled by the Sedimentary Geochemistry and Paleoenvironments Project from across the
stratigraphic record so as to reconstruct the composition of the ancient crust. We find that the
Archean upper continental crust is more mafic than present day, but stabilised into the present
evolved composition by 2.5 - 2.0 Ga.

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