Activities of olivine and plagioclase components in silicate melts and their application to geothermometry

The activity of a given mineral component in a silicate melt can be calculated from the compositions of coexisting melt and crystals, provided that 1) the component is an independently variable component of the crystal, and 2) appropriate thermodynamic data for the component are known. This approach is used to calibrate the compositional dependence of the activities of forsterite, fayalite, anorthite, and albite from experimental data on natural mafic-to-intermediate melts. The natural logarithms of the activities of forsterite and anorthite can be closely approximated as second-degree polynomial functions of the melt composition (r ²=0.99 and 0.97, respectively); corresponding fits for fayalite and albite are significantly poorer (r ²=0.81 and 0.87, respectively). The shapes of the fitted activity surfaces yield information about speciation in silicate melts. The activity models for forsterite and anorthite provide excellent geothermometers with standard deviations of temperature residuals of approximately 10° C. These geothermometers, when combined with the activity models for fayalite and albite, can be used to predict the temperature at which olivine or plagioclase will crystallize from a melt, along with the composition of the crystals.