Post-emplacement fluids and pluton thermobarometry: Mount Stuart batholith, Washington Cascades

Abstract

The effects of post-emplacement infiltration of externally derived, high-temperature fluids into arc-related batholiths are often not well characterized. Such infiltration can have far-reaching effects on the elemental and light isotopic chemistry of a batholith and on its mineral phases. At high temperature, fluid infiltration can be less easily detected, especially if widespread. The Mount Stuart batholith of the Washington Cascades is offered as an example of high-temperature infiltration of high δ18O fluids derived from its contact aureole. Some of the fluid infiltration coincided with and may have been partly derived from a kyanite-grade, post-emplacement metamorphic event that affected northern portions of the batholith. However, the effects of the fluid infiltration were far reaching and affected the entire margin of the batholith, including southerly portions that did not experience post-emplacement metamorphism. The result led to an oxygen isotopic zonation of the batholith, which is viewed as secondary in origin, with expected effects on mineral chemistry, including derived estimates of thermobarometry, a portion of which is also substantially subsolidus in origin. Our revised emplacement barometry of the Mount Stuart batholith, excluding areas affected by fluid infiltration, demonstrates that it was emplaced at ∼350–400 MPa. Soon after emplacement, the batholith was tilted to the north by loading processes and subsequently was righted and unroofed during erosion in the Eocene. Its current near palaeohorizontal orientation has implications for palaeomagnetic studies supporting northward transport (the Baja–British Columbia hypothesis), but these results need further study, given the batholith's complex metamorphic and deformation history and the nature of its dominant magnetic mineralogy (pyrrhotite).