Arc volcanic suite from a Miocene subduction system in SW Japan: A geochemical and zircon U-Pb-Lu-Hf study

Abstract

Arc volcanic rocks are important products of the subduction factory in convergent plate margins and contribute significantly to crust building in the evolving Earth. Southwest Japan provides a window to gain insights into the ongoing subduction-related processes and the early stages of crust building. In this study, we investigate a suite of volcanic rocks from the central segment of the Setouchi volcanic belt (SVB) including dacites and andesite from northeast Shikoku island in southwestern Japan based on petrologic, geochemical, zircon U--Pb, REE (rare-earth element), and Lu--Hf analyses. The dacites and andesite from this region are peraluminous, medium-K, and calc-alkalic, with LREEs (light rare-earth elements) enrichment and depleted in HREEs (heavy rare-earth elements) and HFSEs (high field-strength elements). Two groups of zircon grains occur in these volcanic rocks as revealed from U--Pb studies. The older magmatic zircon grains are of late Cretaceous age and show typical oscillatory zoning yielding 206Pb/238U age peaks at 83.6 Ma with dominantly negative εHf(t) values (−3.7 to +0.9), indicating older reworked crustal sources. The second group is represented by thin elongated prismatic grains with banded structure, which yield 206Pb/238U age peaks at 13.8 Ma and displaying more positive εHf(t) values (+2.4 to +7.7), indicating juvenile sources. A compilation and comparison of the available geochemical and geochronological data on the volcanic suites in the SVB reveal a common source for the coeval island-arc volcanic rocks (andesite-dacites-rhyolite) and HMA (high magnesium andesites). Compared with the HMA, the other volcanics are more evolved through crustal contamination and fractionation.