Origin of Columbia River flood basalt controlled by propagating rupture of the Farallon slab.

Nature
Lijun Liu, Dave R Stegman

Abstract

The origin of the Steens-Columbia River (SCR) flood basalts, which is presumed to be the onset of Yellowstone volcanism, has remained controversial, with the proposed conceptual models involving either a mantle plume or back-arc processes. Recent tomographic inversions based on the USArray data reveal unprecedented detail of upper-mantle structures of the western USA and tightly constrain geodynamic models simulating Farallon subduction, which has been proposed to influence the Yellowstone volcanism. Here we show that the best-fitting geodynamic model depicts an episode of slab tearing about 17 million years ago under eastern Oregon, where an associated sub-slab asthenospheric upwelling thermally erodes the Farallon slab, leading to formation of a slab gap at shallow depth. Driven by a gradient of dynamic pressure, the tear ruptured quickly north and south and within about two million years covering a distance of around 900 kilometres along all of eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. This tear would be consistent with the occurrence of major volcanic dikes during the SCR-Northern Nevada Rift flood basalt event both in space and time. The model predicts a petrogenetic sequence for the flood basalt with sources of melt starting fr...Continue Reading

Citations

Feb 18, 2012·Nature·Cin-Ty A Lee, Stephen P Grand

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