Hotspot cool down Deep-seated mantle plumes are responsible for volcanic island chains such as Hawai’i. Upwelling from the deep interior requires that the plumes are hotter than the surrounding mantle to make it all the way up to the surface. However, Bao et al . found that some of these “hotspots” are surprisingly cool. The temperature is actually low enough to challenge a deep mantle origin for some hotspots. In these specific cases, deep plumes may be entrained and cooled or possibly originate in the upper mantle instead. —BG
Subsurface imaging is key to understanding the origin of intraplate volcanoes. The Changbaishan volcano, located about 2,000 km away from the western Pacific subduction zone, has several debated origins. To investigate this, we compared regional seismic tomography with the electrical resistivity results and obtained high‐resolution 1D and quasi‐2D velocity‐depth profiles. We show that the upper mantle is characterized by two anomalies exhibiting distinct features which cannot be explained by the same mechanism. We document a localized low‐velocity anomaly atop the 410‐km discontinuity, where the P‐wave velocity is reduced more than that of the S‐wave (i.e., lower Vp/Vs). We propose that this anomaly is caused by the reduction of the effective moduli during the phase transformation of olivine. The other anomaly, located between 300 and 370 km depth, reveals a significant reduction of the S‐wave velocity (i.e., higher Vp/Vs), associated with a reduction of the electrical resistivity, altogether consistent with partial melting.
Subsurface imaging is key to understanding the origin of intraplate volcanos. The Changbaishan volcano, located about 2000 km away from the western Pacific subduction zone, has several debated origins. To investigate this, we compared regional seismic tomography with the electrical resistivity results and performed high-resolution 1D and quasi-2D velocity-depth profiles. We show that the upper mantle is characterized by two anomalies exhibiting distinct features which cannot be explained by the same mechanism. We document a localized low-velocity anomaly atop the 410-km discontinuity, where the P-wave velocity is reduced more than that of the S-wave (i.e., low Vp/Vs). We propose that this anomaly is caused by the reduction of the effective moduli during the phase transformation of olivine. The other anomaly, located between 300 km and 370 km depth, reveals a significant reduction of the S-wave velocity (i.e., high Vp/Vs), associated with a reduction of the electrical resistivity, altogether consistent with partial melting.
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