EMES Colloquium Speaker – Donna Whitney

Water and other elements are transferred from seawater into minerals at tectonic zones in the oceans. They are later removed by metamorphic reactions during subduction, influencing the composition of the mantle and, subsequently, magma, continents and arcs, the atmosphere, and eventually the oceans. Part of this vast geochemical cycle is archived in oceanic crust that was metamorphosed in subduction zones and then returned to the Earth’s surface. In this talk, I will discuss new ways of seeing the oceans in water-bearing minerals from subducted oceanic crust and new ways of tracking (and dating!) minerals involved in water and element cycling in subduction zones​​