The birth and death of the oceanic lithosphere: geochemical and tectonic investigations of the Juan de Fuca Ridge and Mariana Trench

Abstract

Hydrothermal fluid circulation within oceanic crust at low temperatures affects global biogeochemical cycles, with the volume of fluid circulation rivaling that of the world's water flux to the oceans from rivers. Our work focuses on the best studied low temperature hydrothermal system on the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge where a buried basement ridge 100 km from the active spreading axis has been sampled with a variety of mediums. We use data from deep sea drilling, gravity coring, and submersible operations from five sites along-strike of the buried ridge to better constrain the chemical and fluid fluxes along this transect. A transport (advection-diffusion) model is applied to the data, constraining the volumetric fluid flux per unit length within the oceanic crust from 0.05 and 0.2 m3 y-1 cm-1 and identifying conservative elements within this system. Using an average fluid flux, reactive fluxes are determined for non-conservative elements within basaltic crust for twenty-four chemical species. Conservative species include K, Cl, SO42-, Ba, Sr, Cs, Mo, and Y. Only Ca and the rare earth elements Ce and Gd are produced by basaltic basement. The remaining chemical species Mg, Na, ammonium, Li, Rb, Mn, Fe, Co, Zn, Cd, U, La and Yb are all consumed within upper basaltic basement. Fluxes of potentially-bioavailable redox species ammonium, Fe, and Mn into the upper basaltic basement are 3 to 20 nmol y-1cm-2. Possible mechanisms of removal are suggested, placing constraints on microbial metabolic activity and biomineralization.