Detailed imaging of Mount Rainier shows subduction zone in glorious detail

Science Focus

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A cross section of Washington's Cascade Range from west to east (left to right) passing near Mt. Rainier, indicated by a red triangle. The colors represent electrical resistivity, with red being low. Contour lines show temperature in degrees Celsius. Small red circles show the centers of earthquakes.

McGary et al/Nature

Most people know that the Pacific Ring of Fire is related to boundaries between tectonic plates, but there’s a common misconception about where the magma comes from to fuel those volcanoes. At those boundaries, called subduction zones, a plate made of denser oceanic crust dives beneath a continent (or another oceanic plate). It’s not that the diving plate heats up and melts as it sinks downward, though.

Actually, the minerals in the diving plate contain lots of water, and that water migrates upward as the plate slowly warms up. The addition of water to hot mantle rocks lowers the melting point of the rock, and this effect is enough to convert some mantle rock into magma. Since magma is less dense than solid rock, it works its way upward toward the surface, resulting in the arcs of volcanoes we see along subduction zones.

Within this simplified picture, however, there are complexities and open questions. Does the water simply rise directly into the mantle rocks above, or does it take a more tortuous path? Is that water the cause of all the magma production in an area, or does some magma form because the flow of mantle rock brings some up to lower pressures where it can melt?

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