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Global Geochemistry of Mid-Ocean Ridge Basalts

Kent Ratajeski
Published Oct. 15, 2006.

Pillow lava along Juan de Fuca Ridge. Details

Description

Geological processes at the mid-ocean ridges are responsible for the bulk of the Earth's heat loss and volcanic activity. The compositions of materials erupted at these locations, dominantly mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB's), have profound implications for the inner workings of the Earth's mantle, the construction of oceanic crust, and global plate tectonics. In this exercise, students replicate a portion of a classic paper on MORB geochemistry [Klein and Langmuir, 1987] , but using a much larger global geochemical dataset downloaded from the PETDB database. Through a series of activities and questions, students are encouraged to think about the petrologic and geodynamic processes controlling the composition of Earth's most abundant volcanic rocks.

This exercise is one of several examples featured in the Geoscience Education in the New Cyberinfrastructure module at SERC. Each example is designed to give instructors and students direct practice for using cyberinformatic databases and tools to analyze Earth science data. Students should begin at the Introduction.

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Karin A. Block, CUNY City College Sep 23, 2024Adapted for Different Teaching Context Updated Tools Updated Data

The following is a step-by-step Jupyter notebook containing Python code that follows the original exercise through Part 2, question 3.

NOTES: This is a Jupyter Notebook, a document in a web browser that you can edit, generate text, and run code (typically Python). The original exercise can be run in any python environment, including the Google Colab environment, Anaconda Jupyter notebook, or in native Python3 instance in your OS terminal. PyGMT can be fussy so run in a different environment if you run into issues. Make sure you have installed most up-to-date packages of NumPy, Pandas, PyGMT.
The original version used a PetDB-curated MORB dataset (*.csv) by Class and Lehnert residing in GitHub. If 404 (not found) errors occur, use the dataset here attached and load it from your local drive. The code contains the ability to pick using a dialog box in the MacOS environment.

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Online Big Data - Bathymetry and MORB compositions
A key feature of modern earth and environmental sciences is that huge observational, experimental and thermodynamic datasets are now available. The IEDA2 data infrastructures hosts observational datasets with EarthChem and experimental and thermodynamic datasets with LEPR/TraceDs (Library of Experimental Phase Relations/Trace element Distribution experimental database). Tools like Python allow for increased interaction with these datasets. In this practical we will look at one MORB dataset, which you can find on PetDB. You can click on the links to understand the data sources.

NumPy for simple math operations, Pandas for data tables, and GMT for mapping

We will explore simple chemical relationships in the geochemical data using Numpy to perform simple mathematical calculations and using Pandas to read in data. We will additionally use the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) package, which is now available in Python, to produce maps and examine mid-ocean ridge bathmetry. GMT is widely used in the Earth and Marine Sciences.