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Seismological constraints on the thermal structure along the Lucky Strike segment (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and interaction of tectonic and magmatic processes around the magma chamber

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Abstract

The crust at mid-ocean ridges is formed through a combination of magmatic and tectonic processes. Along slow-spreading ridges, magmatism is inferred to be discontinuous and episodic, and lithospheric faulting may strongly interact with the melt supply system. These interactions can be studied for the first time at the Lucky Strike segment along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR), where a 3.4 km deep magma chamber (AMC) extending ~6 km along-axis is found at its centre (Singh et al. in Earth Planet Sci Lett 246:353–366, 2006). With an array of ocean bottom seismometers we have detected along this ridge segment approximately 400 microseismic events during a total of 6 days, and located 71 of them, whose local magnitudes ranged from 0.2 to 1.8. While most of the events were concentrated at non-transform offset and inside corners, three events with well-constrained locations were detected beneath the central volcano and at the edges of the AMC. Two of the microearthquakes, which occur in a brittle lithosphere and therefore at temperatures lower than 750°C, are deeper than the AMC and therefore very steep thermal gradients both along- and across-axis. Regionally seismicity deepens from ~6 km at the segment center to >10 km towards the ends.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the crew and officers of the N/O Suroit which made possible the success of the SISMOMAR project. This paper benefitted from numerous discussions with and input form Y. Lagabrielle, M. Sinha, and J. P. Canales. This work was supported by an EU Marie Curie RTN MoMARNET project (DD, TS), ANR-05-3_42213 (JE), CNRS/INSU, IFREMER, and Portugal. This is IPGP contribution number 2542. The manuscript was greatly improved by reviews by D. Bohnenstiehl and an anonymous reviewer.

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  1. D. Dusunur

    Present address: Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS/Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Geosciences Marines, Case 89 IPGP, 4 P. Jussieu, 75252, Paris, Cedex 05, France

    D. Dusunur, J. Escartín, V. Combier, T. Seher, W. Crawford, M. Cannat & S. C. Singh

  2. Centro de Geofísica da Universidade de Lisboa/IDL, Lisbon, Portugal

    L. M. Matias & J. M. Miranda

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  1. D. Dusunur
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Correspondence to D. Dusunur.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Tables 1, 2 and 3.

Table 1 Locations and deployment periods of OBSs
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Table 2 Locations of earthquakes
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Table 3 Parameters to calculate transfer functions of OBSs (Natural period, damping ratio, generator constant, recording gain, amplifier gain)
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Dusunur, D., Escartín, J., Combier, V. et al. Seismological constraints on the thermal structure along the Lucky Strike segment (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and interaction of tectonic and magmatic processes around the magma chamber. Mar Geophys Res 30, 105–120 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-009-9071-3

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