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Oceanic lithosphere carries volatiles, notably water, into the mantle through subduction at convergent plate boundaries. This subducted water exercises control on the production of magma, earthquakes, formation of continental crust and mineral resources. Identifying different potential fluid sources (sediments, crust and mantle lithosphere) and tracing fluids from their release to the surface has proved challenging1. Atlantic subduction zones are a valuable endmember when studying this deep water cycle because hydration in Atlantic lithosphere, produced by slow spreading, is expected to be highly non-uniform2. Here, as part of a multi-disciplinary project in the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc3, we studied boron trace element and isotopic fingerprints of melt inclusions. These reveal that serpentine—that is, hydrated mantle rather than crust or sediments—is a dominant supplier of subducted water to the central arc. This serpentine is most likely to reside in a set of major fracture zones subducted beneath the central arc over approximately the past ten million years. The current dehydration of these fracture zones coincides with the current locations of the highest rates of earthquakes and prominent low shear velocities, whereas the preceding history of dehydration is consistent with the locations of higher volcanic productivity and thicker arc crust. These combined geochemical and geophysical data indicate that the structure and hydration of the subducted plate are directly connected to the evolution of the arc and its associated seismic and volcanic hazards. Serpentine subducted below the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc supplies water to the arc, controlling the location of seismicity, volcanic productivity and thickness of crust.

Arc magmas are commonly assumed to form by melting of sub-arc mantle that has been variably enriched by a component from the subducted slab. Although most magmas that reach the surface are not primitive, the impact of assimilation of the arc crust is often ignored with the consequence that trace element and isotopic compositions are commonly attributed only to varying contributions from different components present in the mantle. This jeopardises the integrity of mass balance recycling calculations. Here we use Sr and O isotope data in minerals from a suite of volcanic rocks from St Lucia, Lesser Antilles arc, to show that assimilation of oceanic arc basement can be significant. Analysis of 87Sr/86Sr in single plagioclase phenocrysts from four Soufrière Volcanic Complex (SVC; St Lucia) hand samples with similar composition (87Sr/86Sr = 0.7089–0.7091) reveals crystal isotopic heterogeneity among hand samples ranging from 0.7083 to 0.7094 with up to 0.0008 difference within a single hand sample. δ180 measurements in the SVC crystals show extreme variation beyond the mantle range with +7.5 to +11.1‰ for plagioclase (n=19), +10.6 to +11.8‰ for quartz (n=10), +9.4 to +9.8‰ for amphibole (n=2) and +9 to +9.5‰ for pyroxene (n=3) while older lavas (Pre-Soufriere Volcanic Complex), with less radiogenic whole rock Sr composition (87Sr/86Sr = 0.7041–0.7062) display values closer to mantle range: +6.4 to +7.9‰ for plagioclase (n=4) and +6 to +6.8‰ for pyroxene (n=5). We argue that the 87Sr/86Sr isotope disequilibrium and extreme values provide compelling evidence for assimilation of material located within the arc crust. Positive correlations between mineral and whole rock 87Sr/86Sr, 143Nd/144Nd and206,207,208Pb/204Pb shows that assimilation seems to be responsible not only for the isotopic heterogeneity observed in St Lucia but also in the whole Lesser Antilles since St Lucia encompasses almost the whole-arc range of isotopic compositions. This highlights the need for detailed mineral-scale investigation of oceanic arc suites to quantify assimilation that could otherwise lead to misinterpretation of source composition and subduction processes.

Pliocene to Quaternary magmatism in the Karacadağ Volcanic Complex in SE Turkey occurred in the foreland region of the Arabia-Eurasia collision and can be divided into two phases. The earlier Karacadağ phase formed a north-south-trending volcanic ridge that erupted three groups of lavas. The same range of mantle sources contributed to the younger Ovabağ phase lavas, which were erupted from monogenetic cones to the east of the Karacadağ fissure. As at several other intraplate localities across the northern Arabian Plate this magmatism represents mixtures of melt from shallow, isotopically enriched mantle and from deeper, more depleted mantle. The deep source is similar to the depleted mantle invoked for other northern Arabian intraplate volcanic fields but at Karacadağ this source contained phlogopite. This source could be located in the shallow convecting mantle or may represent a metasomatic layer in the base of the lithosphere. There is no evidence for a contribution from the Afar mantle plume, as has been proposed elsewhere in northern Arabia. Melting during the Karacadağ and Ovabağ phases could have resulted from a combination of upwelling beneath weak or thinned lithosphere and restricted local extension of that weakened lithosphere as it collided with Eurasia. Tension associated with the collision focused magma of the Karacadağ phase into the elongate shield volcano of Mt. Karacadağ. The northern end of the fissure accommodated more extensive differentiation of magma, with isolated cases of crustal contamination, consistent with greater stress in the lithosphere closest to the collision. Most magma batches of the Karacadağ and Ovabağ phases differentiated by fractional crystallization at ∼5 MPa, near the boundary between the upper and lower crust. Magma batches dominated by melt from garnet lherzolite show evidence for restricted amounts of differentiation at ∼22·5 MPa, which is close to the base of the lithospheric mantle

Gurenko et al. (Contrib Mineral Petrol 162:349-363, 2011) report laser-assisted fluorination (LF) and secondary ionization mass spectrometry (SIMS) O-18/O-16 datasets for olivine grains from the Canary Islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro. As with prior studies of oxygen isotopes in Canary Island lavas (e.g. Thirlwall et al. Chem Geol 135:233-262, 1997; Day et al. Geology 37:555-558, 2009, Geochim Cosmochim Acta 74:6565-6589, 2010), these authors find variations in delta O-18(ol) (similar to 4.6-6.0 aEuro degrees) beyond that measured for mantle peridotite olivine (Mattey et al. Earth Planet Sci Lett 128:231-241, 1994) and interpret this variation to reflect contributions from pyroxenite-peridotite mantle sources. Furthermore, Gurenko et al. (Contrib Mineral Petrol 162:349-363, 2011) speculate that delta O-18(ol) values for La Palma olivine grains measured by LF (Day et al. Geology 37:555-558, 2009, Geochim Cosmochim Acta 74:6565-6589, 2010) may be biased to low values due to the presence of altered silicate, possibly serpentine. The range in delta O-18(ol) values for Canary Island lavas are of importance for constraining their origin. Gurenko et al. (Contrib Mineral Petrol 162:349-363, 2011) took a subset (39 SIMS analyses from 13 grains from a single El Hierro lava; EH4) of a more extensive dataset (321 SIMS analyses from 110 grains from 16 Canary Island lavas) to suggest that delta O-18(ol) is weakly correlated (R (2) = 0.291) with the parameter used by Gurenko et al. (Earth Planet Sci Lett 277:514-524, 2009) to describe the estimated weight fraction of pyroxenite-derived melt (Xpx). With this relationship, end-member delta O-18 values for HIMU-peridotite (delta O-18 = 5.3 +/- A 0.3 aEuro degrees) and depleted pyroxenite (delta O-18 = 5.9 +/- A 0.3 aEuro degrees) were defined. Although the model proposed by Gurenko et al. (Contrib Mineral Petrol 162:349-363, 2011) implicates similar pyroxenite-peridotite mantle sources to those proposed by Day et al. (Geology 37:555-558, 2009, Geochim Cosmochim Acta 74:6565-6589, 2010) and Day and Hilton (Earth Planet Sci Lett 305:226-234, 2011), there are significant differences in the predicted delta O-18 values of end member components in the two models. In particular, Day et al. (Geochim Cosmochim Acta 74:6565-6589, 2010) proposed a mantle source for La Palma lavas with low-delta O-18 (< 5 aEuro degrees), rather than higher-delta O-18 (c.f. the HIMU-peridotite composition of Gurenko et al. in Contrib Mineral Petrol 162:349-363, 2011). Here we question the approach of using weakly correlated variations in delta O-18(ol) and the Xpx parameter to define mantle source oxygen isotope compositions, and provide examples of why this approach appears flawed. We also provide reasons why the LF datasets previously published for Canary Island lavas remain robust and discuss why LF and SIMS data may provide complementary information on oxygen isotope variations in ocean island basalts (OIB), despite unresolved small-scale uncertainties associated with both techniques.