The terrestrial planetary bodies display a wide variety of surface expressions and histories of volcanic and tectonic, and magnetic activity, even those planets with apparently similar dominant modes of heat transport (e.g., conductive on Mercury, the Moon, and Mars). Each body also experienced differentiation in its earliest evolution, which may have led to density-stabilized layering in its mantle and a heterogenous distribution of heat-producing elements. We explore the hypothesis that mantle structure exerts an important control on the occurrence and timing of geological processes such as volcanism and tectonism. We investigate numerically the behavior of an idealized model of a planetary body where heat-producing elements are assumed to be sequestered in a stabilized layer at the top or bottom of the mantle. We find that the mantle structure alters patterns of heat flow at the boundaries of major heat reservoirs: the mantle and core. This modulates the way in which heat production influences geological processes. In the model, mantle structure is a dominant control on the relative timing of fundamental processes such as volcanism, magnetic field generation, and expansion/contraction, the record of which may be observable on planetary body surfaces. We suggest that Mercury exhibits characteristics of shallow sequestration of heat producing elements and that Mars exhibits characteristics of deep sequestration.

Darien Florez1,2, Christian Huber1, Susana Hoyos2, Matej Pec2, E.M. Parmentier1, James A. D. Connolly3, Greg Hirth11Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA2Department of the Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA3Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zürich, SwitzerlandCorresponding author: Darien Florez ([email protected])Key Points:Continuum model fits repacking experiments data of Hoyos et al.(2022) despite their stochastic nature.At intermediate melt fractions, mechanical repacking of particles may contribute significantly to the resistance of mushes to compaction.Particle-particle friction, rather than hydrodynamic effects, dominates viscous resistance associated with mechanical repacking.AbstractBefore large volumes of crystal poor rhyolites are mobilized as melt, they are extracted through the reduction of pore space within their corresponding crystal matrix (compaction). Petrological and mechanical models suggest that a significant fraction of this process occurs at intermediate melt fractions (ca. 0.3 – 0.6). The timescales associated with such extraction processes have important ramifications for volcanic hazards. However, it remains unclear how melt is redistributed at the grain-scale and whether using continuum scale models for compaction is suitable to estimate extraction timescales at these melt fractions. To explore these issues, we develop and apply a two-phase continuum model of compaction to two suites of analog phase separation experiments – one conducted at low and the other at high temperatures, T, and pressures, P. We characterize the ability of the crystal matrix to resist porosity change using parameterizations of granular phenomena and find that repacking explains both datasets well. Furthermore, repacking may explain the difference in compaction rates inferred from high T + P experiments and measured in previous deformation experiments. When upscaling results to magmatic systems at intermediate melt fractions, repacking may provide an efficient mechanism to redistribute melt. Finally, outside nearly instantaneous force chain disruption events occasionally recorded in the low T + P experiments, melt loss is continuous, and two-phase dynamics can be solved at the continuum scale with an effective matrix viscosity. Further work, however, must be done to develop a framework to parameterize the effect of particle size and shape distributions on compaction.

The origin of widespread volcanism far from plate boundaries and mantle plumes remains a fundamental unsolved question. An example of this puzzle is the Anatolian region, where abundant intraplate volcanism has occurred since 10 Ma, but a nearby underlying plume structure in the deep mantle is lacking. We employed a combination of seismic and geochemical data to link intraplate volcanism in Anatolia to a trail of magmatic centers leading back to East Africa and its mantle plume, consistent with northward asthenospheric transport of over ~2500 km distance. Joint modeling of seismic imaging and petrological data indicates that the east Anatolian mantle potential temperature is higher than the ambient mantle (~1420C). Based on multiple seismic tomography models, the Anatolian upper mantle is likely connected to East Africa by an asthenospheric channel with low seismic velocities. Along the channel, isotopic signatures among volcanoes are consistent with a common mantle source, and petrological data demonstrate similar elevated mantle temperatures, consistent with little cooling in the channel during the long-distance transport. Horizontal asthenospheric pressure gradients originating from mantle plume upwelling beneath East Africa provide a mechanism for high lateral transport rates that match the relatively constant mantle potential temperatures along the channel. Rapid long-distance asthenospheric flow helps explain the widespread occurrence of global intraplate magmatism in regions far from deeply-rooted mantle plumes throughout Earth history.