Age and petrology of alkalic postshield and rejuvenated-stage lava from Kauai, Hawaii

Abstract

At the top of the Waimea Canyon Basalt on the island of Kauai, rare flows of alkalic postshield-stage hawaiite and mugearite overlie tholeiitic flows of the shield stage. These postshield-stage flows are 3.92 Ma and provide a younger limit for the age of the tholeiitic shield stage. The younger Koloa Volcanics consist of widespread alkalic rejuvenated-stage flows and vents of alkalic basalt, basanite, nephelinite, and nepheline melilitite that erupted between 3.65 and 0.52 Ma. All the flows older than 1.7 Ma occur in the west-northwestern half of the island and all the flows younger than 1.5 Ma occur in the east-southeastern half. The lithologies have no spatial or chronological pattern. The flows of the Koloa Volcanics are near-primary magmas generated by variable small degrees of partial melting of a compositionally heterogeneous garnet-bearing source that has about two-thirds the concentration of P2O5, rare-earth elements, and Sr of the source of the Honolulu Volcanics on the island of Oahu. The same lithology in the Koloa and Honolulu Volcanics is generated by similar degrees of partial melting of distinct source compositions. The lavas of the Koloa Volcanics can be generated by as little as 3 percent to as much as 17 percent partial melting for nepheline melilitite through alkalic basalt, respectively. Phases that remain in the residue of the Honolulu Volcanics, such as rutile and phlogopite, are exhausted during formation of the Koloa Volcanics at all but the smallest degrees of partial melting. The mantle source for Kauai lava becomes systematically more depleted in 87Sr/86Sr as the volcano evolves from the tholeiitic shield stage to the alkalic postshield stage to the alkalic rejuvenated stage: at the same time, the lavas become systematically more enriched in incompatible trace elements. On a shorter timescale, the lavas of the Koloa Volcanics display the same compositional trends, but at a lower rate of change. The source characteristics of the Koloa Volcanics, considered along with those of the Honolulu Volcanics, support a mixing model in which the source of rejuvenated-stage lava represents large-percent melts of a plume source mixed with small amounts of small-percent melts of a heterogeneous mid-ocean-ridge source.