Metamorphic veining and mass transfer in a chemically closed system: a case study in Alpine metabauxites (western Vanoise)

Abstract

In western Vanoise (French Alps), karstic pockets of Triassic-to-Jurassic metabauxites embedded in carbonate rocks and containing several generations of metamorphic veins were studied. During blueschist facies metamorphism, a cumulative amount of ∼13 vol% of water is inferred to have been produced locally by successive dehydration reactions, and part of this fluid remained in the bauxitic lenses during most of the metamorphic cycle. Field and geochemical evidence show that these rocks have been isolated from large-scale fluid flow (closed-system behaviour). It is proposed that the internally derived fluid has promoted the opening of fluid-filled open spaces (as attested by the euhedral habits of vein minerals) and served as medium for mass transfer from rock to vein. Indeed, the vein infill is obviously the result of chemical interactions, at the millimetre-to-centimetre scale, between the rock minerals and the locally produced aqueous fluid. Two vein types can be distinguished based on mineralogical and textural features: (i) some veins are filled with newly formed products of either prograde (chloritoid) or retrograde (chlorite) metamorphic reactions; in this case, fluid-filled open spaces seem to offer energetically favourable nucleation/growth sites; (ii) the second vein type is infilled with cookeite or pyrophyllite, that were present in the host rock prior to the vein formation. In this closed chemical system, the components for the vein infill minerals have been transferred from rock to vein through the fluid, in a dissolution–transport–precipitation process, possibly stress-assisted. These different vein generations all contain Al-rich mineral infills, suggesting that Al was a mobile element (cm scale) during metamorphism. In these HP rocks, fluid flow may have been restricted, and if so mass transfer occurred by diffusion in an almost stagnant fluid. Metamorphic veins can be seen as witnesses of fluid and mass redistribution that partly accommodate the rock deformation (lateral segregation).