| Abstract: | The effects of mixing processes on the isotopic variability of mid-ocean ridge basalts are studied. The processes considered are porous flow dispersion and convective mixing in magma chambers. Porous flow dispersion is capable of mixing magmas over distances of only a few tens of meters. Convective mixing, on the other hand, is found to produce mixing over scales of kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. Calculations of convective mixing are carried out for continuous magma chambers, where mixing is limited by convective processes, and for discontinuous chambers, where mixing is limited by chamber size. Preliminary comparison of our calculations with observations along the mid-ocean ridges shows that the calculations are consistent with the existence of a correlation between bathymetry and isotopic ratio at long, but not at short, wavelengths. They are also capable of explaining a decrease in isotopic variability with increasing spreading rate. |
