Diabasic intrusion and lavas, segregation veins, and magma differentiation at Kahoolawe volcano, Hawaii

Abstract

A mafic sill-like intrusion, ~5 × 30 m, exposed along the eastern shoreline of Kahoolawe Island, Hawaii, represents tholeiitic magma emplaced as diabase among caldera-filling lavas. It differentiated from ~7.8 wt.% MgO to yield low-MgO (2.9 wt.%) vesicular segregation veins. We examined the intrusion for whole-rock and mineral compositions for comparison to Kahoolawe caldera-fill lavas (some also diabasic), to the Uwekahuna laccolith (Kilauea), and to gabbros, diabases, and segregations and oozes of other tholeiitic shield volcanoes (e.g., Mauna Loa and Kilauea lava lakes). We also evaluate this extreme differentiation in terms of MELTS modeling, using parameters appropriate for Hawaiian crystallization environments. Kahoolawe intrusion diabase samples have major and trace element abundances and plagioclase, pyroxene, and olivine compositions in agreement with those in gabbros and diabases of other volcanoes. However, the intrusion samples are at the low-MgO end of the large MgO range formed by the collective comparative samples, as many of those have between 8 and 20 wt.% MgO. The intrusion’s segregation vein has SiO2 53.4 wt.%, TiO2 3.2 wt.%, FeO 13.5 wt.%, Zr 350 ppm, and La 16 ppm. It plots in compositional fields formed by other Hawaiian segregations and oozes that have MgO <5 wt.%—fields that show large variances, such as factor of ~2 differences for incompatible element abundances accompanying SiO2 from ~49 to 59 wt.%. Our MELTS modeling assesses the Kahoolawe intrusion as differentiating from ~8 wt.% MgO parent magma beginning along oxygen buffers equivalent to FMQ and FMQ-2, having magmatic H2O of 0.15 and 0.7 wt.% (plus traces of CO2 and S), and under 100 and 500 bars pressure. Within these parameters, MELTS calculates that <3 wt.% MgO occurs at ~1,086 to 1,060 °C after ~48 to 63 % crystallization, whereby the lesser crystallization percentages and lower temperatures equate to higher magmatic H2O, leading to high SiO2, ~56–58 wt.%. To contrast, greater crystallization is calculated for lower H2O, for which it achieves less SiO2, <55 wt.%. While MELTS reliably predicts SiO2 approaching 58 wt.% for differentiation beyond <4 wt.% MgO, and shows that Kahoolawe intrusion’s segregations and those of Kilauea and Mauna Loa are all reasonably accommodated by the modeled parameters and SiO2 differentiation curves, MELTS fails where it predicts that Fe enrichment is more robust under FMQ than FMQ-2 buffers. That failure not withstanding, MELTS differentiation from liquidus temperatures ~1,205–1,185 °C (depending on the various parameters) gradually increases fO2 (up to ~0.4 log units, as normalized to FMQ) until magnetite crystallizes at ~1,090–1,085 °C, which reduces absolute fO2 ~1 to 1.5 log units. The modeled Kahoolawe intrusion, then, exemplifies how tholeiitic magma differentiation can produce extreme SiO2 and incompatible element compositions, and how Hawaiian segregations from shallow intrusions and lava lakes can be generally modeled under compositional and physical parameters appropriate for Hawaiian tholeiitic magmatism.