Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests the interaction between arc magmas and crustal carbonates may play a large role in outgassed CO2 at arcs. We examine magma–carbonate interactions within the shallow (< 0.2 GPa) crust in the Jurassic Bonanza arc on Vancouver Island, a well-exposed island arc crustal section. Detailed mapping in the Merry Widow mountain area revealed unique, late-stage orbicular mafic dikes that only occur above the stratigraphic level of subsurface carbonates. The orbicular dikes are primitive, show physical and chemical evidence of interaction with limestone, including high CaO/SiO2 and low REE (~ 10–20× chondrite) that correlate with orbicule abundance, and are geochemically discordant from other rocks of the Bonanza arc. The orbicules have identical intergranular textures to the host melt but markedly higher Ca/Si. Simple binary mixing and MELTS modeling indicates the orbicular dike compositions are a mixture of a primitive hydrous arc basalt with 3–25% limestone addition. Comparisons to published experimental data on basalt–calcite reaction suggest some of the dike compositions result from > 25% calcite assimilation, producing up to 11 wt% CO2, orders of magnitude higher than the CO2 solubility of the parent melt (0.11 wt% CO2). We interpret the orbicules as Ca-rich hybrid melts produced from limestone assimilation that did not homogenize with the host dike magma and underwent crystallization during rapid ascent, possibly propelled by the excess CO2. Our results inform on the amount and mechanism of CO2 transport at low crustal pressures (< 0.5 GPa) in island arcs built on carbonate platforms. We estimate the CO2 flux of the Jurassic Bonanza arc to have ranged from 0.14 to > 1.16 Tg CO2/year during its ~ 34 Myr lifespan.
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Acknowledgements
We thank G. Iacono-Marziano and anonymous for their constructive reviews. We also thank O. Müntener for additional comments and editorial handling of the paper. Analytical work for this project was made possible with the assistance from J. Spence at the University of Victoria, and A. Locock at the University of Alberta. We are grateful to S. Wing for his field assistance. Funding for this work was supported by a NSERC of Canada Discovery Grant 154275 (DC), Geoscience BC Scholarships (RM), and the Mineralogical Association of Canada (RM).
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Supplementary file1. Figure 1 Ductile folding of limestone at Merry Widow occurs on a cm- and m-scale at when in close proximity with magma contacts (i.e., pluton, dikes, sills). a Folding is evident in graphite-rich layers. Photo taken near dike outcrop RM19-78 with a field book for scale. b Ductile flow of limestone around a boudinaged mafic sill. Photo taken near outcrop RM19-161. The map board for scale is 20 cm wide (PDF 239 kb)
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Supplementary file2. Figure 2 Field photos showing orbicular dikes in outcrop, with light coloured orbicules set in a darker groundmass of host melt. Note the amalgamation of some orbicules. Photos taken at outcrop RM19-120, pen for scale (PDF 175 kb)
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Supplementary file3. Figure 3 Field relationships of the late-stage orbicular dikes cross-cutting earlier mafic dikes and monzonite of the Merry Widow pluton (PDF 547 kb)
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Supplementary file4. Figure 4 Pearce element ratio diagrams of plagioclase-phyric dikes (black circles) and orbicular dikes (red and yellow circles) using K (a) and Nb (b) as normalizing elements. A slope of ~ 1 for dikes indicates that the melts were dominantly controlled by olivine + clinopyroxene + plagioclase ‘sorting’ (addition and/or fractionation). This also indicates these elements were immobile on the scale of the samples. The disposition of orbicular dikes from a slope of ~ 1 when normalized to K and Nb indicates the orbicular dikes are part of a separate chemical system with different petrogenetic processes (i.e., crustal assimilation) than closed-system olivine + clinopyroxene + plagioclase addition and/or fractionation (PDF 79 kb)
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Supplementary file5. Figure 5 Compositions of orbicule dike margins, interiors, host melt, and orbicules, as well as plagioclase-phyric dikes compared to two-liquid fields (solvi) in the systems a SiO2/4 − CaO − Al2O3 (Charlier and Grove 2012) and b FeO + MnO + TiO2 + CaO + P2O5 − Al2O3 − MgO − K2O − Na2O–SiO2 (Roedder 1951; Philpotts 1982). Note all compositions plot within the one-liquid field when compared with experimentally derived two-liquid solvi (PDF 289 kb)
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Morris, R., Canil, D. CO2 transport at shallow depths in arc magmas: evidence from unique orbicular dikes in the Jurassic Bonanza arc, Vancouver Island, Canada. Contrib Mineral Petrol 177, 6 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00410-021-01852-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00410-021-01852-y