Crustal magma plumbing within a segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 35°N

Abstract

We report the results of a seismic tomography experiment which images the three-dimensional nature of the crustal melt delivery system beneath a segment of the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In the lower crust (>3.5 km depth) near the segment center, inversion of first-arriving crustal P-waves reveals a pair of vertical pipe-like (<10-km-diameter) low-velocity anomalies (−0.4 km/s). In the upper crust, these two features, which are physically isolated from each other below 3 km, both connect to a 10-km-wide, 45-km-long, axis-parallel, low-velocity zone (−0.2 km/s). Three higher-amplitude low-velocity anomalies (−0.6 km/s) are observed in the upper crust (<2 km depth), and are located directly beneath seafloor volcanic features. We interpret the overall image to represent the thermal/melt signature of a magma feeding system in which focused injections of magma from the mantle travel upward until they intersect the brittle-ductile transition, where they are then diverted along-axis to supply shallow intrusive bodies and seafloor eruptions along much of the ridge segment.