Revisiting the compositions and volatile contents of olivine-hosted melt inclusions from the Mount Shasta region: implications for the formation of high-Mg andesites

Abstract

Primitive chemical characteristics of high-Mg andesites (HMA) suggest equilibration with mantle wedge peridotite, and they may form through either shallow, wet partial melting of the mantle or re-equilibration of slab melts migrating through the wedge. We have re-examined a well-studied example of HMA from near Mt. Shasta, CA, because petrographic evidence for magma mixing has stimulated a recent debate over whether HMA magmas have a mantle origin. We examined naturally quenched, glassy, olivine-hosted (Fo87–94) melt inclusions from this locality and analyzed the samples by FTIR, LA-ICPMS, and electron probe. Compositions (uncorrected for post-entrapment modification) are highly variable and can be divided into high-CaO (>10 wt%) melts only found in Fo > 91 olivines and low-CaO ( 90 olivines. Restored low-CaO melt inclusions are HMAs (57–61 wt% SiO2; 4.9–10.9 wt% MgO), whereas high-CaO inclusions are primitive basaltic andesites (PBA) (51–56 wt% SiO2; 9.8–15.1 wt% MgO). HMA and PBA inclusions have distinct trace element characteristics. Importantly, both types of inclusions are volatile-rich, with maximum values in HMA and PBA melt inclusions of 3.5 and 5.6 wt% H2O, 830 and 2,900 ppm S, 1,590 and 2,580 ppm Cl, and 500 and 820 ppm CO2, respectively. PBA melts are comparable to experimental hydrous melts in equilibrium with harzburgite. Two-component mixing between PBA and dacitic magma (59:41) is able to produce a primitive HMA composition, but the predicted mixture shows some small but significant major and trace element discrepancies from published whole-rock analyses from the Shasta locality. An alternative model that involves incorporation of xenocrysts (high-Mg olivine from PBA and pyroxenes from dacite) into a primary (mantle-derived) HMA magma can explain the phenocryst and melt inclusion compositions but is difficult to evaluate quantitatively because of the complex crystal populations. Our results suggest that a spectrum of mantle-derived melts, including both PBA and HMA, may be produced beneath the Shasta region. Compositional similarities between Shasta parental melts and boninites imply similar magma generation processes related to the presence of refractory harzburgite in the shallow mantle.