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Melt Extraction and Crustal Thickness Variations at Segmented Mid-Ocean Ridges

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Melt Extraction and Crustal Thickness Variations at Segmented Mid-Ocean Ridges ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: MELT EXTRACTION AND CRUSTAL THICKNESS VARIATIONS AT SEGMENTED MID-OCEAN RIDGES Hailong Bai, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Associate Professor Laurent G. J. Montési Department of Geology Mid-ocean ridges are underwater volcanic mountains extending more than 55,000 km in ocean basins worldwide, accounting for nearly 80% of the Earth’s volcanism. They are the birthplace of new seafloor, resurfacing two thirds of the planet over about 100 million years. At mid-ocean ridges, tectonic plates move away from each other, a phenomenon known as seafloor spreading, at rates ranging from slow (~10 cm/yr) to fast (~100 cm/yr). Plate divergence induces the underlying mantle to rise and melt. Buoyant melts segregate from the mantle and collect toward axes of mid-ocean ridges, where they are extracted and solidify into new oceanic crust. The thickness of oceanic crust, the final product of ridge magmatism, contains integrated information about plate motion, mantle flow, mantle temperature, melt generation, melt extraction and crustal accretion. In this dissertation, I investigate three types of crustal thickness variations at mid-ocean ridges to provide insights into the Earth’s deep, less accessible interior. Mid-ocean ridges are broken into segments bounded by transform faults. At fast-spreading ridges, transform faults exhibit thicker crust than adjacent ridge segments, while the crust along transform faults at slow-spreading ridges is thinner. I show that these observations are compatible with melt being extracted along fast- slipping transform faults, but not at the slow-slipping ones. The plates on either side of a ridge axis may move away from the ridge at different rates. I reveal a discrepancy between the expected and observed topography at such asymmetrically spreading ridges, and argue that the discrepancy is best explained by asymmetric crustal thickness, with thicker crust on the slower-moving plate and thinner crust on the faster-moving plate. Crustal thickness may differ between ridge segments separated by a transform fault, in a way that correlates with the relative motion between the ridge and the underlying mantle. I study the three-dimensional effects of background mantle flow, and demonstrate that the pattern of along-axis crustal thickness variations is controlled by the relative angle between ridge and background mantle flow. This dissertation systematically examines the origins of crustal thickness variations at mid-ocean ridges, and provides constraints on mantle and melt dynamics. MELT EXTRACTION AND CRUSTAL THICKNESS VARIATIONS AT SEGMENTED MID-OCEAN RIDGES by Hailong Bai Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Laurent G. J. Montési, Chair Senior Scientist Mark D. Behn Assistant Professor Vedran Lekic Associate Professor Amir Riaz Assistant Professor Nicholas C. Schmerr Associate Professor Wenlu Zhu © Copyright by Hailong Bai 2017 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my families: my parents, my grandparents, my sister, my lovely nieces Huanhuan and Lele, and my wife Yuanyuan. Your love and support always give me courage, strength, warmth and delight. ii Acknowledgements This marks the end of my PhD study. The excitement of living in US, the cultural shock, the anxiety before the first time teaching, the nights with two-hour sleep on the office floor, the depression when model did not work, the decompression when model actually worked, the sunset moonrise glorious clouds in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the joy of the first publication, the walks in the campus, the presentations in conferences, the stressfulness of dissertation writing. For years, you feel safe and desperate that it’s never going to end, next moment, it ends. Suddenly six years feel so short. Half of me just cannot believe it and wants to go to the office tomorrow as usual, the other half is shouting and cheering: I made it! I could not have made it without the help of my advisor Laurent Montési. He led me into the field of mid-ocean ridge research, and taught me how to be a good scientist. His support, guidance and efforts made this dissertation possible. I enjoyed working with this intelligent scientist and patient advisor. The philosophy I learned from him, to tackle a problem starting from its simplest setting, has been beneficial to both my research and everyday life. I’m grateful to other members of my dissertation defense committee: Mark Behn, Wenlu Zhu, Vedran Lekic, Nicholas Schmerr, and Amir Riaz, for their constructive reviews of my dissertation and participations in my defense. Special thanks to Mark Behn, for traveling from Woods Hole, Massachusetts to College Park, Maryland to attend my defense. iii My thanks to Deborah Smith. She was the chief scientist onboard R/V Knorr for the scientific cruise KN210-05 I participated in. Her leadership and enthusiasm in exploration always inspire me. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues and friends in the Geodynamics Group: Mark Larson, Jiangyi Hou, Kristel Izquierdo, Kevin Miller, Joe Schools, Stephanie Johnston, Alexis Martone, Juan Rodríguez-Gonzâlez and Laura Hebert, for all the discussions on science, causal chats on life, practice talks, paper readings, and numerical tutorials. I’m especially thankful to Mark Larson. His patience in explaining things helped me overcome the cultural shock. Indeed we had many enlightening conversations about science, philosophy, politics, science fictions and board games. More importantly, I get free beer every time I visit him. I would also like to acknowledge the faculty and staff from the Department of Geology for the academic, administrative and technical support. Special thanks to Roberta Rudnick, for her smiles and caring for students, and Bill McDonough, for his encouragements and positive attitude. Thanks to all my friends. Conversations with Huan Cui always inspired me to think more about humanity and society. Ming Tang sets an example of “working smart” that I always try to follow, and I enjoyed discussing photography with him. Thanks to Chao Gao, Xizheng Wang, Jiangyi Hou, Manyi Wang, Kang Chen, Tiange Xing, Quancheng Huang, Meng Guo, Yu Huang, Xiaoming Liu, Su Li, Songjie Wang, Bin Xia, Shaobing Zhang, Lihui Chen, Longlong Gou, for all the food and drinks we shared, and the fun and good times we had. My thanks extends to fellow iv graduate students in the Department of Geology. Thank you for making the grad school life joyful. My PhD study was funded by the National Science Foundation grant OCE- 0937277, the teaching assistantship from the Department of Geology, and Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School. A portion of my conference travel was supported by Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant from the Graduate School, and the ESSIC Travel Award from the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. Finally, so long, Maryland. v Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ............................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .............................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Mantle Flow ........................................................................................................ 3 1.3 Thermal Structure ............................................................................................... 4 1.4 Melt Generation .................................................................................................. 6 1.5 Melt Migration and Extraction ............................................................................ 7 1.5.1 Ridge Suction ............................................................................................... 8 1.5.2 Buoyant Upwelling ...................................................................................... 8 1.5.3 Hydrofracturing............................................................................................ 9 1.5.4 Shear-Induced Instability ............................................................................. 9 1.5.5 Reactive Infiltration Instability .................................................................. 10 1.5.6 Permeability Barrier ................................................................................... 11 1.6 Crustal Thickness .............................................................................................. 12 1.6.1 Along-Axis Crustal Thickness Variations ................................................. 13 1.6.2 Cross-Axis Crustal Thickness Variations .................................................. 15 1.6.3 Crustal Thickness Variations between Ridge and Transform Fault .......... 16 Chapter 2: MeltMigrator:
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