Mantle Melting nd th Generation of Hastie Magma qk and finally amet from about 80 to 49 km, At greater ‘rps high-pressure phases occur. The ee ~60-kn transition ap. in IV-fold coordination, © mineral perovskite with §) in vol coortinaion, probably exist beyond this dep Thi sequence of reactions explains how we van have compositionally equivalent spinel and gammet heroes aay sho tellus that plagioclase Iherzotites area low-presan at temativ, aso with the same chemical composition. I nto, cexphins why plagioclase, spinel, and amet are rarely found together inthe same sample and Why plagioclase Ihevolies $e foun oly in shallow mantle samples ophiaites and enon basalts), whereas g ea net therzolites occur more com. mony in kimberites that tap a deeper mantle source: Hecaney aginclse perdotites are limited to depths less than alee 3) ki, hich is less than the thickness of much of the cont rental cust, we Would expect plagioclase peridotite to be ah «ent in most ofthe subcontinental mantle, the top of which fy commonly deeper than 30 km, This explains why itis so nage is hinberits, The transitions from plagioclase to spinel per dove nd from spinel o gamet peridot are accomplished by the following idealized metamorphic reactions: + MgAhO, (1) spinel MzAlO. ~ 4 MgSiO3 = Mg;SiOg + MgsAlsSi0, Spinel opx olivine garnet 2) 2 MELTING OF THE MANTLE Now that we have an idea of the chemical and mineralogi ‘al nature of the mantle, let's return to our original que tion regarding the feasibility of mantle melting. The ssotherm shown in Figure 2 does not intersect the solidus for fertile mantle Iherzolites, which supports our sarlier contention, based on seismic data, that melting of the mantle does not occur under normal circumstances. There are a number of estimates for the average oceanic eotherm, but none of them approach the solidus. So our first problem, because we know that basalts are indeed fenerated, is to figure out how the mantle can be melted There are three basic ways to accomplish this goal, follow- ine the three principal natural variables. We can either false the temperature, lower the pressure, or change the Composition. Of course, these must be done in a geologi- Cally feasible manner. Let's analyze each of these possible ‘mechanisms in turn, 2.1 Raising Temperature Figure 3 shows how melting could be accomplished by puPly heating the mantle above the normal geotherm, ps the simplest way we might do this is to accumulate FIGURE 3 IMelting by raising the temperature enough heat by the decay of radioactive elements because thisis the only known source of heat other than that eseaping from the primordial differentiation process. The prime ra- dioactive elements (K, U, and Th) occur in such low con- centrations inthe mantle that they are capable of producing less than 10°" J g"'a"'. A typical rock has a specific heat (the heat required to raise 1 g of rock 1°C) on the order of | J gl deg", It would thus require over 107 years for ra- dioactive decay to raise the temperature of peridotite 1°C. ‘The thermal conductivity of rocks is pretty low, but it is cer- tainly high enough to allow this heat to dissipate long be- fore any rocks would even approach melting. In fact, this radioactive generation and conduction of heat is exactly the process responsible for up to half of the heat flow reaching the surface that creates the geotherm in the first place. Local concentration of radioactive elements to increase heat production would require highly unrealistic concentra- tion factors, with no driving mechanism to compensate for the entropy loss. If, in the unlikely event that we did some- hhow accomplish this concentration and managed to heat the mantle (0 its solidus, the heat required for melting must supply the latent heat of fusion of the minerals, which is about 300 times greater than the specific heat required to bring the minerals up to the melting point. The job of pro- ducing sufficient melts to be extractable thus becomes even more difficult. Its widely believed that the sudden jump in heat required to further raise the temperature of rocks al- ready at their solidus plays a significant rote in moderating ‘unusual thermal fluxes inthe mantle. Finally, if a percent or {wo of melt were produced, the K, U, and Th, which are highly incompatible, would concentrate in the melt and es- cape, leaving the peridotite too depleted to produce further ‘melts equal to the surface volcanism we observe. ‘The heat flux from the lower mantle of core isnot well ‘understood. In general, itis constrained by the geothermal gradient itself in Figure 2, but this gradient is an average, and local perturbations may be possible, The most obvious ifestations of locally high heat flow are the hotspots, such as Hawaii, which are above narrow pipe-like conduits of basaltic magma that appear to have a stationary source in the mantle (Crough, 1983; Brown and Mussett, 1993), The motion of plates over these stationary hotspots results in the apparent migration of the volcanic activity across the 195 @ scanned with OKEN Scanner