Oceanic Plateau and Spreading Ridge Subduction Accompanying Arc Reversal in the Solomon Islands

Abstract

AbstractWe study the collision of the Ontong Java Plateau, reversal of the Solomon Islands arc, and subduction of the Woodlark Basin spreading ridge in the southwest Pacific. Double‐sided subduction and intra‐arc deformation, not just polarity reversal, characterize the rapid Australia‐Pacific plate convergence. The rifted margins of the 0–6.2‐Ma Woodlark Basin separate its unflexed young lithosphere without a trench from the older flexed lithosphere with >8‐km‐deep trenches subducting to either side. A gap evident in the seismicity and tomography between the NE‐subducted slabs of the Solomon Sea and Australia plates indicates that the Woodlark lithosphere likely melts and/or is quickly (<1 m.y.) resorbed into the mantle. A section of the Pacific Plate remains attached within the gap and provides the slab pull to form the Malaita accretionary prism. Quaternary arc‐composition volcanoes that occur on both sides of the Woodlark Basin subduction front are not sourced from a mantle wedge overlying a Wadati‐Benioff zone, but come from and through breaks in the young incoming and subducting lithosphere and the overturning mantle beneath. Though the basin is too weak to sustain plate flexure, arc volcanoes on the subducting crust result in locally strong coupling to the forearc, manifest by tsunamigenic earthquakes. At 150–400‐km depth, the subducted slabs under the Solomon Islands are near vertical. They are near‐horizontal between the 410 and 660‐km mantle discontinuities beneath the Woodlark Basin and further south, whereas beneath the Solomon Sea Basin they dip southwest and penetrate the 660‐km discontinuity, having been detached by the north‐dipping Solomon Sea slab.