About this Research Topic
Lithospheric mantle provides critical links between underlying asthenosphere and overlying crust. Understanding the evolution of lithospheric mantle beneath continents and ocean floors sheds lights on the plate tectonics of our dynamic planet Earth. The compositions and characteristics of mantle rocks, including peridotites, pyroxenites, and eclogites, and their constituent minerals are widely used to constrain the evolution trajectories of lithospheric mantle. For instance, it is intriguing that ancient subcontinental mantle were documented in active oceanic mantle and that crustal materials could be recycled into upper mantle through processes of subduction and delamination.
This Research Topic welcomes the synergistic use of geochemical, petrological, mineralogical, experimental, geodynamic, and interdisciplinary investigations on all above to constrain the scale and distribution of heterogeneities in the lithospheric mantle and understand its formation and evolution, as well as its links with processes of crust formation and crustal materials recycling.
Submissions are encouraged to make distinctions between oceanic and subcontinental lithospheric mantle in perspectives of mineral components, geochemistry, and geochronology. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Peridotites that are major lithologies in the oceanic and continental mantle and provide evidence for melt depletion, refertilization, and metasomatic events
• Pyroxenites that contain invaluable information regarding lithosphere geodynamics and the geochemical evolution of the converting mantle
• Eclogites
• Ophiolites that are massifs and samples from active settings (e.g., IODP drilling), probes of recycled crustal and mantle materials during the formation and evolution of oceanic lithosphere/orogenic/rifting processes
This Research Topic welcomes the synergistic use of geochemical, petrological, mineralogical, experimental, geodynamic, and interdisciplinary investigations on all above to constrain the scale and distribution of heterogeneities in the lithospheric mantle and understand its formation and evolution, as well as its links with processes of crust formation and crustal materials recycling.
Submissions are encouraged to make distinctions between oceanic and subcontinental lithospheric mantle in perspectives of mineral components, geochemistry, and geochronology. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Peridotites that are major lithologies in the oceanic and continental mantle and provide evidence for melt depletion, refertilization, and metasomatic events
• Pyroxenites that contain invaluable information regarding lithosphere geodynamics and the geochemical evolution of the converting mantle
• Eclogites
• Ophiolites that are massifs and samples from active settings (e.g., IODP drilling), probes of recycled crustal and mantle materials during the formation and evolution of oceanic lithosphere/orogenic/rifting processes
Keywords: peridotite, pyroxenite, eclogite xenolith, ophiolite, subcontinental lithospheric mantle, oceanic lithospheric mantle
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
