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Topics in Igneous Petrology pp 29–53Cite as

Deccan Traps Flood Basalt Province: An Evaluation of the Thermochemical Plume Model

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Abstract

The Deccan volcanic event occurred when India was situated at the present location of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The cause, duration of eruptive pulses of this major volcanic event and its impact on the global climate are controversial. Plume versus non-plume hypothesis for the origin of Deccan melting anomaly is evaluated here based on a review of geochemical and limited geophysical criteria. We know that the most primitive Deccan magmas were picritic in composition that equilibrated in the mantle at about 1,550°C (±25) and 2.5 (±0.3) GPa. These magmas were generated from a large plume. We find that much of the differentiated and contaminated appearing basalts could not have been produced from such picritic magmas, and suggest that such tholeiites are a product of melts derived from the plume, the subcontinental lithospheric peridotites, and from ancient orogenic-type eclogitic blocks embedded within the continental lithosphere.

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Acknowledgments

We are pleased to dedicate this review paper to the late Prof. Mihir K. Bose, a leader in Indian petrology and a Deccan Traps enthusiast. We were fortunate to make Professor Bose aware of this volume being prepared in his honor before he passed away. It is unfortunate that neither of us has collaborated with Prof. Bose; however, his papers certainly intrigued us and kept us thinking of the larger issues. We are very grateful to Dr. Hetu Sheth for a thorough review and constructive suggestions that led to some important changes in the original manuscript. We thank Kevin Chau for his help with running Lee et al.’s (2009) program to calculate P, T. We are also thankful to Prof. S. Viswanathan for his critical comments and editing the manuscript.

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  1. Research & Graduate Studies, American University of Sharjah, 26666, Sharjah, UAE

    Gautam Sen (Vice Provost)

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, (IITB), Powai, Mumbai, 400 076, India

    D. Chandrasekharam

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  1. Gautam Sen
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Correspondence to Gautam Sen .

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  1. Dept. Geology, University of Calcutta, Ballygunge Circular Rd. 35, Kolkata, 700019, India

    Jyotisankar Ray

  2. Dept. Earth Sciences, Florida Center for Analytical, Florida International University, Miami, 33199, Florida, USA

    Gautam Sen

  3. , Department of Geology, University of Calcutta, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata, 700019, India

    Biswajit Ghosh

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Sen, G., Chandrasekharam, D. (2011). Deccan Traps Flood Basalt Province: An Evaluation of the Thermochemical Plume Model. In: Ray, J., Sen, G., Ghosh, B. (eds) Topics in Igneous Petrology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9600-5_2

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