Source of Galapagos eruptions is not where models place it

(Press-News.org) Contact information: Jim Barlow
jebarlow@uoregon.edu
541-346-3481
University of Oregon
Source of Galapagos eruptions is not where models place it University of Oregon study finds plume to the southeast, explaining active volcanic activity in the islands

EUGENE, Ore. -- Images gathered by University of Oregon scientists using seismic waves penetrating to a depth of 300 kilometers (almost 200 miles) report the discovery of an anomaly that likely is the volcanic mantle plume of the Galapagos Islands. It's not where geologists and computer modeling had assumed.

The team's experiments put the suspected plume at a depth of 250 kilometers (155 miles), at a location about 150 kilometers (about 100 miles) southeast of Fernandina Island, the westernmost island of the chain, and where generations of geologists and computer-generated mantle convection models have placed the plume.

The plume anomaly is consistent with partial melting, melt extraction, and remixing of hot rocks and is spreading north toward the mid-ocean ridge instead of, as projected, eastward with the migrating Nazca plate on which the island chain sits, says co-author Douglas R. Toomey, a professor in the UO's Department of Geological Sciences.

The findings -- published online Jan. 19 ahead of print in the February issue of the journal Nature Geoscience -- "help explain why so many of the volcanoes in the Galapagos are active," Toomey said.

The Galapagos chain covers roughly 3,040 square miles of ocean and is centered about 575 miles west of Ecuador, which governs the islands. Galapagos volcanic activity has been difficult to understand, Toomey said, because conventional wisdom and modeling say newer eruptions should be moving ahead of the plate, not unlike the long-migrating Yellowstone hotspot.