Buffering of melt oxygen fugacity by sulphur redox reactions in calc-alkaline magmas

Abstract

Calculated oxygen fugacities of magmas from Lascar Volcano, Northern Chile, and the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Phillipines, are seen to increase with decreasing temperature, relative to the fayalite-magnetite-quartz buffer. Isopleths of constant H 2 S/SO 2 at moderate pressures (2–4 kbar) lie parallel to the data. We conclude that magma mixing prior to eruption liberated large quantities of SO 2 gas by oxidation of dissolved sulphide in the mafic end-member. Oxygen fugacity of the magmas was then buffered by reduction of this gas to H 2 S, leading to increasingly oxidized magmas. Such a process might be used to explain the highly oxidized nature of other sulphur-rich evolved calc-alkaline magmas, notably the El Chichon trachyandesite.