Title: A plume origin for long-lived mantle melts at the base of the Cocos Plate
Abstract: The Cocos Plate, located in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, has been the focus of multiple geophysical, geochemical, and seafloor drilling surveys over the last four decades. Here we explore a portion of the Cocos Plate where a magnetotelluric (MT) survey imaged an electrically conductive channel at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB); the channel’s high conductivity is best explained with low-degree partial melt at the LAB. Yet the presence and thermomechanical stability of melts at the LAB is debated. In this presentation, I will use different methods to confirm the partial melt inference. Using a suite of observations, we will piece together a 20-million-year saga of the Cocos Plate that documents multiple episodes of intraplate magmatism likely fed by the same source, a LAB melt channel of plume origin that persists to this day.
Bio: Dr. Samer Naif, based in Atlanta, GA, US, is currently an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, bringing experience from previous roles at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and UC San Diego. Samer Naif holds a PhD in Earth Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.
To join virtually: Zoom
Contact: snaif@eas.gatech.edu
Recording: Zoom Recording (will be available within a week after the seminar)