Partial melting, fluid supercriticality and element mobility in ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic rocks during continental collision

Abstract

Partial melting at continental lithosphere depths plays an important role in generating geochemical variations in igneous rocks. In particular, dehydration melting of ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) metamorphic rocks during continental collision provides a petrological link to intracrustal differentiation with respect to the compositional evolution of continental crust. While island arc magmatism represents one end-member of fluid-induced large-scale melting in the mantle wedge during subduction of the oceanic crust, the partial melting of UHP rocks can be viewed as the other end-member of fluid-induced small-scale anatexis during exhumation of the deeply subducted continental crust. This latter type of melting is also triggered by metamorphic dehydration in response to P–T changes during the continental collision. It results in local occurrences of hydrous melts (even supercritical fluids) as felsic veinlets between boundaries of and multiphase solid inclusions in UHP metamorphic minerals as well as local accumulation of veinlet-like felsic leucosomes in foliated UHP metamorphic rocks and metamorphically grown zircons in orogenic peridotites. Thus, very low-degree melts of UHP rocks provide a window into magmatic processes that operated in continental subduction zones. This article presents a review on available results from experimental petrology concerning the possibility of partial melting under conditions of continental subduction-zone metamorphism, and petrological evidence for the occurrence of dehydration-driven in-situ partial melting in natural UHP rocks during the continental collision. Although the deeply subducted continental crust is characterized by a relative lack of aqueous fluids, the partial melting in UHP rocks commonly takes place during decompression exhumation to result in local in-situ occurrences of felsic melts at small scales. This is caused by the local accumulation of aqueous fluids due to the breakdown of hydrous minerals and the exsolution of structural hydroxyl and molecular water from nominally anhydrous minerals in UHP rocks during the exhumation. The dehydration melting of UHP rocks would not only have bearing on the formation of supercritical fluids during subduction-zone metamorphism, but also contribute to element mobility and ultrapotassic magmatism in continental collision orogens. Therefore, the study of dehydration melting and its effects on element transport in UHP slabs, rocks and minerals is a key to chemical geodynamics of continental subduction zones.