Ruiguang PAN

and 2 more

Ultra-high pressure (UHP) metamorphism of the Tso Morari coesite-eclogite during burial in NW Himalaya has been intensively studied over the past several decades. However, amphibolite-facies metamorphism and accompanying metasomatism occurring at lower-crustal depths in the Tso Morari terrane are less well-constrained. In this study, we characterize the eclogite amphibolization and related metasomatic fluids by systematically sampling and analyzing the eclogites at the core of an eclogite boudin and the amphiblolized eclogite (amphibolite) at the rim. Integrated techniques including modal mineralogy, mineral chemistry, whole-rock geochemistry, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and thermodynamic modelling are used to constrain the fluid-induced eclogite amphibolization and associated fluid behaviors. Petrographic observations show that infiltration of an external fluid caused complete amphibolite-facies overprinting of the eclogites at the boudin rim. This is recorded petrographically as increased modal proportions of amphibole, biotite, epidote, plagioclase, and calcite in the amphibolites. The infiltrating fluid caused increased K2O and CO2 concentrations and higher bulk-rock Fe3+/ΣFe ratio for the amphibolites, as well as increased LILE (e.g., K, Rb, Cs, Sr, Ba) and ratios of Ba/Rb and Cs/Rb. Phase equilibria modelling using P–T–M(H2O) pseudosections on the amphibolite and the surrounding gneiss indicate that the fluid infiltration occurred at 9.0–12.5 kbar and ~608 °C with >2.6–3.1 mol % H2O infiltration. The abrupt increase of bulk-rock Fe3+/ΣFe ratio from 0.192 to 0.395 near the boudin rim indicate that this phase of fluid most likely derived from the mixing of dehydrated host orthogneiss and/or metasediments during uplift at the amphibolite-facies zone in the subduction channel. This study also demonstrates the need for using careful petrographic observations and geochemical analysis in parallel with thermodynamic modelling to achieve realistic results.

RUIGUANG PAN

and 2 more

The development of thermodynamic modeling techniques and availability of updated thermodynamic databases and activity-composition (a-X) relations, call for an evaluation of modeling pressure-temperature (P-T) paths of metabasites. In this study, eclogite from the Tso Morari UHP terrane, NW India, is used as a representative metabasite to compare P-T paths generated from the widely used THERMOCALC (TC) and Theriak-Domino (TD) programs. We also evaluate the effect of using the most updated thermodynamic database ds 62 (Holland and Powell 2011) relative to an older version ds 55 (Holland and Powell 1998), and the most updated garnet a-X relations of White et al. (2014) (W14) relative to an older version of White et al. (2007) (W07), while accounting for the effect of garnet fractionation. The following modeling protocols were assessed: (1) TC33: TC v3.33 with ds 55 and garnet a-X relations of W07; (2) TC47: TC v3.47 with ds 62 and garnet of W14; (3) TDG: TD with ds 62 and garnet of W14, and (4) TDW: TD with ds 62 and garnet of W07. TC47 and TDG modeling protocols yield a similar peak metamorphic P-T of 34 ± 1.5 kbar at 544 ± 15 °C and 551 ± 12 °C, respectively; while TC33 and TDW modeling yield similar peak P-T results: 26 ± 1 kbar at 565 ± 8 °C and 28.5 ± 1.5 kbar at 563 ± 13 °C, respectively. Results indicate that all four modeling protocols generally provide consistent thermodynamic simulations regarding metamorphic compositional and temperature evolution; however, the pressure generated by protocols using W14 (TC47 and TDG) is 5–8 kbar higher than that predicted by protocols using W07 (TC33 and TDW). The difference in peak pressure results for the modeling protocols (TC47 and TDG vs. TC33 and TDW) are beyond the suggested uncertainty using mineral isopleth thermobarometry in pseudosections: ± 50 °C and ± 1 kbar at 2σ (Powell and Holland 2008). This study illustrates that the choice of garnet a-X relations can affect predictions of peak pressure regardless of program choice, as well as the need of comparison between modeling predictions and petrological observations.