Lava samples from across the Galápagos, like those from this 2005 eruption of Sierra Negra volcano on Isabela Island, will be the focus of this study.
Karen Harpp, professor of earth and environmental sciences and peace and conflict studies, and Val Finlayson, assistant research scientist in the Department of Geology at the University of Maryland, have received an award for $30,000 for their pilot project, “A Reconnaissance Study of Tungsten Isotopic Ratios in the Galápagos Mantle Plume.” Mantle plumes are columns of hot rock that supply ocean island volcanic chains, such as Hawai’i and the Galápagos.
Because plumes transport material from the core-mantle boundary, lavas at volcanic islands supplied by mantle plumes are our only direct window into the composition of materials in the deep Earth. The project will apply state-of-the-art tungsten isotopic analysis to lavas from across the Galápagos archipelago, with a specific goal of identifying whether mantle plumes are sampling material from Earth’s core. Our results may have important implications for understanding the origins of mantle plumes, Earth dynamics, and early planetary formation processes.