Upper Mantle Composition Beneath the Petit-Spot Area in Northwestern Pacific: Insights From Electrical Conductivity

The mantle composition beneath the petit-spot area, where is about 500 km offshore from Japan Trench in northwestern Pacific, is discussed through electrical conductivity obtained by seafloor magnetotelluric (MT) survey. The seafloor MT data were collected using ocean bottom electromagnetometers (OBEMs) at four sites with the spacing of 100-150 km, between May and August, 2005. The survey was conducted as a part of the petit-spot multidsciplinary project. The petit-spot is young volcanic activity on very old (~130 Ma) oceanic plate characterized as a clump of small knolls which erupted strong to moderate alkaline basalt. This volcanic field is associated with neither any plate boundaries nor hot spots. To elucidate the magma generation process of this new-type volcanic activity, a collaborative study of various geophysical and geochemical approaches has been carried out. The MT survey aims to constrain the physical state of the lithosphere and asthenosphere where the petit-spot melt is probably generated. The acquired electromagnetic field variation data were analyzed and the MT responses, which is the transfer function between the electric and magnetic fields, were obtained. The effect for the ocean-land distribution and seafloor topography on the MT responses was modeled and stripped. As the result, the corrected responses indicate that the lateral heterogeneity in electrical conductivity is less significant beneath the survey area. One- dimensional inversion study shows that the data require a peak in conductivity (0.05 S/m) at about 200 km depth. The mantle temperature may be calculated from the conductivity using an experimental result for dry olivine (Constable et al., 1992). The resultant temperature is about 1750 °C which is lower than the dry solidus for garnet peridotite. Instead, assuming the temperature as GDH1 model (Stein and Stein, 1992) for 130 Myr old mantle, we calculate water content in olivine using an experimental result by Wang et al. (2006). The resultant water content is about 0.001 wt%, which is again too small to decrease solidus and to initiate partial melting. Consequently, the conductivity model does not support the melt generation in the asthenosphere. The inconsistency between the conductivity model and the existence of the petit-spot volcanoes may be explained by contribution of material like eclogite which the solidus is much lower than garnet peridotite.