T78 Investigating the Origin of Arc Magmatism and the Evolution of Continental Crust from the Aleutians to the Southern Andes: In Honor of Suzanne Mahlburg Kay, Recipient of the Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology, and Volcanology Division Distinguished Geological Career Award

Monday, 23 September 2019
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 132ABC, North Building

UPPER CRUSTAL ASSIMILATION-FRACTIONAL CRYSTALLIZATION IN THE NEOGENE CENTRAL ANDES - A MODEL FOR CONTINENTAL SILICIC VOLCANO-PLUTONIC PROVINCES

Paper number: T78-6
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:20 AM – 9:40 AM

Authors

Abstract

Extending from the base of the crust to pre-eruptive levels in the upper crust, transcrustal magmatic systems are the foundries and foundations of the continental crust. Here progressive thermal and chemical evolution produces the batholiths and their complementary caldera-related magma systems in the upper 9 to 5 km. Rather than being merely a zone of stagnation, accumulation, eventual eruption, or viscous death of magmas whose character has been set at deeper levels, the evidence from the Central Andes is for the shallow pre-eruptive levels to be where adolescent magmas mature to their final chemical and rheological character. Typically erupting as crystal-rich dacites, derivative crystal-poor rhyolites and their plutonic equivalents, these calc-alkaline, metaluminous and peraluminous magmas have been forged by upper crustal assimilation fractional crystallization.

Evidence for upper crustal evolution includes: Quartz-hosted melt inclusion with H2O and CO2 contents (2.1 to 6.0 wt %, 36 to 630 ppm, respectively) indicating quartz crystallization took place at pressures of ~200 -100 MPa; δ18O from quartz and zircon crystals from + 8.1 to + 9.6‰ and +6.7 to +7.8‰ respectively; carryover of zircon antecrysts from previous magmatic episodes in long-lived co-axial, volcanic centers; and xenocrysts (zircon) of upper crustal assimilant lithologies.

Whole-rock isotopic ratios of 87Sr/86Sr, 143Nd/144Nd, and Pb-isotopes, coupled with δ18O are best reconciled with a two- stage assimilation–fractional crystallization (AFC) model. Stage 1 initiates with parental melts from the 30 to 15km deep Altiplano–Puna Magma Body (APMB) fractionating and assimilating crustal lithologies in the upper crust (10–25 km depth) to generate the andesitic magma that represent the parental magmas. These magmas subsequently accumulate and undergo a second stage of AFC in the uppermost crust (~800–850°C and 5–9 km depth) to produce the dacitic to rhyolitic compositions erupted as ignimbrites. The parental magmas are represented by ubiquitous andesitic compositions in most ignimbrites and associated lavas.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 51, No. 5

doi: 10.1130/abs/2019AM-335750

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