Tracing and identifying recycled carbonates is a key issue to reconstruct the deep carbon cycle. To better understand carbonate subduction and recycling beneath the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, high‐K cal‐alkaline volcanic rocks including trachy‐basalts and trachy‐andesites from Tengchong were studied using Mg and Ca isotopes. The low δ26Mg (−0.31 ± 0.03‰ to −0.38 ± 0.03‰) and δ44/40Ca (0.67 ± 0.07‰ to 0.80 ± 0.04‰) values of these volcanic rocks compared to those of the mantle (−0.25 ± 0.07‰ and 0.94 ± 0.05‰, respectively) indicate the incorporation of isotopically light materials into the mantle source, which may be carbonate‐bearing sediments with low δ26Mg and δ44/40Ca values. In addition, no correlations of δ26Mg and δ44/40Ca with either SiO2 contents or trace element abundance ratios (e.g., Sm/Yb and Ba/Y) were observed, suggesting that limited Mg and Ca isotopic fractionation occurred during cal‐alkaline magmatic differentiation. A binary mixing model using Mg–Ca isotopes shows that 5–8% carbonates dominated primarily by dolostone were recycled back into the mantle. Since Tengchong volcanism is still active and probably related to ongoing plate tectonic movement, we propose that the recycled carbonates are derived from oceanic crust related to the ongoing subduction of the Indian plate.
2 February 2018 in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Mantle peridotites show that Ca is isotopically heterogeneous in Earth's mantle, but the mechanism for such heterogeneity remains obscure. To investigate the effect of partial melting on Ca isotopic fractionation and the mechanism for Ca isotopic heterogeneity in the mantle, we report high‐precision Ca isotopic compositions of the normal Mid‐Ocean Ridge Basalts (N‐MORB) from the southern Juan de Fuca Ridge. δ44/40Ca of these N‐MORB samples display a small variation ranging from 0.75 ± 0.05 to 0.86 ± 0.03‰ (relative to NIST SRM 915a, a standard reference material produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology), which are slightly lower than the estimated Upper Mantle value of 1.05 ± 0.04‰ and the Bulk Silicate Earth (BSE) value of 0.94 ± 0.05‰. This phenomenon cannot be explained by fractional crystallization, because olivine and orthopyroxene fractional crystallization has limited influence on δ44/40Ca of N‐MORB due to their low CaO contents, while plagioclase fractional crystallization cannot lead to light Ca isotopic compositions of the residue magma. Instead, the lower δ44/40Ca of N‐MORB samples compared to their mantle source is most likely caused by partial melting. The offset in δ44/40Ca between N‐MORB and BSE indicates that at least 0.1–0.2‰ fractionation would occur during partial melting and light Ca isotopes are preferred to be enriched in magma melt, which is in accordance with the fact that δ44/40Ca of melt‐depleted peridotites are higher than fertile peridotites in literature. Therefore, partial melting is an important process that can decrease δ44/40Ca in basalts and induce Ca isotopic heterogeneity in Earth's mantle.