Scientific Drilling and Related Research in the Samail Ophiolite, Sultanate of Oman

This workshop report describes plans for scientific drilling in the Samail ophiolite in Oman in the context of past, current, and future research. Long-standing plans to study formation and evolution of the Samail crust and upper mantle, involving igneous and metamorphic processes at an oceanic spreading center, have been augmented by recent interest in ongoing, low temperature processes. These include alteration and weathering, and the associated sub-surface biosphere supported by chemical potential energy due to disequilibrium between mantle peridotite and water near the surface. This interest is motivated in part by the possibility of geological carbon capture and storage via engineered, accelerated mineral carbonation in Oman

Geophysical signatures of past and present hydration within a young oceanic core complex

Borehole logging at the Atlantis Massif oceanic core complex provides new information on the relationship between the physical properties and the lithospheric hydration of a slow-spread intrusive crustal section. Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Hole U1309D penetrates 1.4 km into the footwall to an exposed detachment fault on the 1.2 Ma flank of the mid-Atlantic Ridge, 30°N. Downhole variations in seismic velocity and resistivity show a strong correspondence to the degree of alteration, a recorder of past seawater circulation. Average velocity and resistivity are lower, and alteration is more pervasive above a fault around 750 m. Deeper, these properties have higher values except in heavily altered ultramafic zones that are several tens of meters thick. Present circulation inferred from temperature mimics this pattern: advective cooling persists above 750 m, but below, conductive cooling dominates except for small excursions within the ultramafic zones. These alteration-related physical property signatures are probably a characteristic of gabbroic cores at oceanic core complexes

Rupture by damage accumulation in rocks

The deformation of rocks is associated with microcracks nucleation and propagation, i.e. damage. The accumulation of damage and its spatial localization lead to the creation of a macroscale discontinuity, so-called "fault" in geological terms, and to the failure of the material, i.e. a dramatic decrease of the mechanical properties as strength and modulus. The damage process can be studied both statically by direct observation of thin sections and dynamically by recording acoustic waves emitted by crack propagation (acoustic emission). Here we first review such observations concerning geological objects over scales ranging from the laboratory sample scale (dm) to seismically active faults (km), including cliffs and rock masses (Dm, hm). These observations reveal complex patterns in both space (fractal properties of damage structures as roughness and gouge), time (clustering, particular trends when the failure approaches) and energy domains (power-law distributions of energy release bursts). We use a numerical model based on progressive damage within an elastic interaction framework which allows us to simulate these observations. This study shows that the failure in rocks can be the result of damage accumulation

Subduction initiation and ophiolite crust: new insights from IODP drilling

International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 352 recovered a high-fidelity record of volcanism related to subduction initiation in the Bonin fore-arc. Two sites (U1440 and U1441) located in deep water nearer to the trench recovered basalts and related rocks; two sites (U1439 and U1442) located in shallower water further from the trench recovered boninites and related rocks. Drilling in both areas ended in dolerites inferred to be sheeted intrusive rocks. The basalts apparently erupted immediately after subduction initiation and have compositions similar to those of the most depleted basalts generated by rapid sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges, with little or no slab input. Subsequent melting to generate boninites involved more depleted mantle and hotter and deeper subducted components as subduction progressed and volcanism migrated away from the trench. This volcanic sequence is akin to that recorded by many ophiolites, supporting a direct link between subduction initiation, fore-arc spreading, and ophiolite genesis

Earth's oldest mantle fabrics indicate Eoarchaean subduction

The extension of subduction processes into the Eoarchaean era (4.0-3.6 Ga) is controversial. The oldest reported terrestrial olivine, from two dunite lenses within the ~3,720 Ma Isua supracrustal belt in Greenland, record a shape-preferred orientation of olivine crystals defining a weak foliation and a well-defined lattice-preferred orientation (LPO). [001] parallel to the maximum finite elongation direction and (010) perpendicular to the foliation plane define a B-type LPO. In the modern Earth such fabrics are associated with deformation of mantle rocks in the hanging wall of subduction systems; an interpretation supported by experiments. Here we show that the presence of B-type fabrics in the studied Isua dunites is consistent with a mantle origin and a supra-subduction mantle wedge setting, the latter supported by compositional data from nearby mafic rocks. Our results provide independent microstructural data consistent with the operation of Eoarchaean subduction and indicate that microstructural analyses of ancient ultramafic rocks provide a valuable record of Archaean geodynamics

Drilling constraints on lithospheric accretion and evolution at Atlantis Massif, Mid-Atlantic Ridge 30°N

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): B07103, doi:10.1029/2010JB007931.Expeditions 304 and 305 of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cored and logged a 1.4 km section of the domal core of Atlantis Massif. Postdrilling research results summarized here constrain the structure and lithology of the Central Dome of this oceanic core complex. The dominantly gabbroic sequence recovered contrasts with predrilling predictions; application of the ground truth in subsequent geophysical processing has produced self-consistent models for the Central Dome. The presence of many thin interfingered petrologic units indicates that the intrusions forming the domal core were emplaced over a minimum of 100–220 kyr, and not as a single magma pulse. Isotopic and mineralogical alteration is intense in the upper 100 m but decreases in intensity with depth. Below 800 m, alteration is restricted to narrow zones surrounding faults, veins, igneous contacts, and to an interval of locally intense serpentinization in olivine-rich troctolite. Hydration of the lithosphere occurred over the complete range of temperature conditions from granulite to zeolite facies, but was predominantly in the amphibolite and greenschist range. Deformation of the sequence was remarkably localized, despite paleomagnetic indications that the dome has undergone at least 45° rotation, presumably during unroofing via detachment faulting. Both the deformation pattern and the lithology contrast with what is known from seafloor studies on the adjacent Southern Ridge of the massif. There, the detachment capping the domal core deformed a 100 m thick zone and serpentinized peridotite comprises ∼70% of recovered samples. We develop a working model of the evolution of Atlantis Massif over the past 2 Myr, outlining several stages that could explain the observed similarities and differences between the Central Dome and the Southern Ridge

Paleo‐Permeability Structure of the Crustal Section of the Samail Ophiolite Based on Automated Detection of Veins in X‐Ray CT Core Images From the Oman Drilling Project

Abstract To assess the paleo‐permeability structure of oceanic crust, we used 3‐D X‐ray Computed Tomography (XCT) images to quantify the distribution and geometry of mineral veins in core samples from Oman Drilling Project Holes GT1A, GT2A, and GT3A, which correspond to the upper to lower crustal sections of the Samail ophiolite. We developed a new method that automatically detects veins in the XCT core images based on iterative adaption of the two‐step Hough transform combined with multiscale Hessian filtering for identifying an elongate structure. Application of the developed method allowed us to identify the geometry and Computed Tomography number of more than 1500 veins with millimeter‐scale apertures in core sections with a total length of ∼1,200 m. High‐CT (HCT) veins in the drilled cores can be related to relatively high‐temperature fluid circulation near the mid‐ocean ridge, whereas Low‐CT (LCT) veins can be related to subsequent low‐temperature fluid circulation. Applying fracture fluid‐flow models to the geometric information for the detected veins, we found that the HCT and LCT vein systems both yielded bulk permeability of 10−13–10−9 m2 for each hole. This indicates that millimeter‐wide fractures can control crustal‐scale permeability, even in the lower oceanic crust. However, these vein systems show different depth dependencies and anisotropies of permeability, possibly reflecting the different spatial variations of high‐ and low‐temperature fluid circulation in oceanic crust