HR: 17:15h
AN: V24B-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Patterns of Volcanism Associated With Oligocene to Recent Dome Uplift, West Antarctic Rift System
AU: * Le Masurier, W E
EM: wesley.lemasurier@colorado.edu
AF: Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0450 United States
AB: The Marie Byrd Land dome lies on the Pacific coast of the West Antarctic rift system. It is a structural dome defined by elevations of a low-relief erosion surface that is exposed in fault- block nunataks. The dome has roughly 3000 m of structural relief and is about 800 km in diameter.The growth of the dome has been closely associated with two rather unusual patterns of volcanic activity that provide keys to the timing and rate of uplift. (1) The ages of basaltic rocks that rest on the erosion surface become systematically older with increasing elevation of the surface, e.g. 6.27 Ma at 600 m elevation, 27 Ma at 2700 m, etc., suggesting that uplift began around 27 Ma and continued to 6 Ma at roughly 100m/m.y. (2) The oldest of 18 felsic shield volcanoes formed around 19 Ma at the dome crest. The remaining felsic volcanoes become systematically younger toward the distal flanks of the dome, along linear, fault-controlled, N-S and E-W chains. Late Pleistocene (active) volcanoes lie at the north, south, east, and west margins of the dome, suggesting that uplift proceeded systematically from 19 Ma to the present by centrifugal extension of relict fractures during uplift, accompanied by the rise of felsic magmas from crustal reservoirs. Teleseismic studies (Winberry and Anandakrishnan, 2004) show that the crust has been thinned over the dome crest, and that the dome is supported by low density mantle. Tomographic images near the dome (Sieminski, et al., 2003) show a low velocity column extending down to the transition zone. The Antarctic plate has been stationary at least since the Eocene. In the apparent absence of a mechanism driven by plate tectonics, it is reasonable to infer that mantle plume activity has produced these spatial and temporal patterns of volcanism focused around dome uplift, rather than the more familiar linear volcanic chains associated with moving plates.
DE: 8178 Tectonics and magmatism
DE: 9310 Antarctica (4207)
SC: Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology [V]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005