Continental Arc and Back-Arc Migration in Eastern NE China: New Constraints on Cretaceous Paleo-Pacific Subduction and Rollback

The Pacific: from “Arc of Instability” to “Arc of Responsibility” and then to “Arc of Opportunity”?

This special volume of Security Challenges contains contributions from leading experts and Pacific scholars that reflect on progress and prospects in the “Pacific arc”. This Introduction begins by identifying common themes that emerge from the contributions regarding the way in which Australia relates to the arc, and how the arc responds to Australia. It then summarises the contributors’ conclu...

Constraints on the bulk composition and root foundering rates of continental arcs: A California arc perspective

[1] Garnet pyroxenites are the most common deep lithospheric xenolith assemblages found in Miocene volcanic rocks that erupted through the central part of the Sierra Nevada batholith. Elemental concentrations and isotope ratios are used to argue that the Sierra Nevada granitoids and the pyroxenite xenoliths are the melts and the residues/cumulates, respectively, resulting from partial melting/f...

Subduction erosion: Rates, mechanisms, and its role in arc magmatism and the evolution of the continental crust and mantle

Behaviour of high field strength elements in subduction zones: constraints from Kamchatka–Aleutian arc lavas

Models explaining the characteristic depletion of High Field Strength Elements (HFSE) relative to elements of similar compatibility in subduction zone magmas invoke either (1) the presence of HFSE-rich minerals in the subduction regime or (2) a selectively lower mobility of HFSE during subduction metasomatism of the mantle. In order to investigate the properties of HFSE in subduction regimes cl...

Intraoceanic subduction spanned the Pacific in the Late Cretaceous–Paleocene

The notorious ~60° bend separating the Hawaiian and Emperor chains marked a prominent change in the motion of the Pacific plate at ~47 Ma (million years ago), but the origin of that change remains an outstanding controversy that bears on the nature of major plate reorganizations. Lesser known but equally significant is a conundrum posed by the pre-bend (~80 to 47 Ma) motion of the Pacific plate...