Posts by shoughton

Ben Urann has graduated from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program (2015-2021)! Congratulations for a great job Ben!

I have obtained a visiting Scholar award to visit the IGN, University of Copenhagen (Denmark) for some months. Thank you to both WHOI and IGN for support.

Quantifying the concurrent changes in rock volume and fluid composition during serpentinization remains a major challenge in assessing its physicochemical  effects during continental rifting, seafloor spreading, and subduction. Here we conducted a series of 11 hydrothermal laboratory experiments where cylindrical cores of natural dunite, harzburgite, and pyroxenite were reacted with an aqueous solution at 300…

Ben Urann (PhD student in Le Roux’s group) just published his work on halogen cycling in subduction zones! We present in situ secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and electron microprobe analyses of coexisting garnet, omphacite, phengite, amphibole, and apatite, combined with pyrohydrolysis bulk-rock analyses to constrain the distribution, abundance, and behavior of halogens (F and…

Congratulations Emman!

The peridotite section of supra-subduction zone ophiolites is often crosscut by pyroxenite veins, reflecting the variety of melts that percolate through the mantle wedge, react, and eventually crystallize in the shallow lithospheric mantle. Understanding the nature of parental melts and the timing of formation of these pyroxenites provides unique constraints on melt infiltration processes that…

Emmanuel Codillo (now PhD student in Le Roux’s group) just published the work he performed as an undergraduate guest student at WHOI! The mechanisms of transfer of crustal material from the subducting slab to the overlying mantle wedge are still debated. Mélange rocks, formed by mixing of sediments, oceanic crust, and ultramafics along the slab-mantle…

A great outreach event with geobiologist collaborator Joan Bernhard. This spring, we introduced students at the Perkins School for the Blind to foraminifera, or forams: small, single-celled organisms that abound in ocean waters and seafloor sediments. Joan collected a variety of forams which were scanned using x-ray micro-computed tomography in the Mantle Rocks lab. The computer models were then enlarged,…

Alicia ‘Cici’ Cruz-Uribe (WHOI postdoc 2014-2015) has just published her work on melange melting in Geology. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/528313/generation-of-alkaline-magmas-in-subduction-zones “Here we report results from experiments in which natural mélange materials were partially melted at upper mantle conditions to produce alkaline magmas. Partial melts produced in our experiments have trace-element abundance patterns that are typical of alkaline arc lavas,…

The SCARF 2017 student-led cruise is back on shore! After a few days in the Azores we sailed across the mid-Atlantic ridge aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong and acquired bathymetry, gravity and magnetics data along a flow line. It was an amazing adventure! SCARF 2017: A modern-day transatlantic crossing