Connecting mantle flow below passive margins and intraplate melt generation: an application to the Cameroon Volcanic Line.

Approximately 90% of all magmatism on Earth can be explained through plate tectonics; the remainder is associated with intraplate volcanism. In large part, this intraplate volcanism can be attributed to mantle plumes, yet this does not represent all known examples. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain non-plume related intraplate volcanism. One geodynamically viable theory through the process of small-scale convection associated with lithospheric instabilities evolving into edge driven convection (EDC) in regions which possess large variations in lithospheric thickness. One such intraplate volcanic example that may be explained by this process is the Cameroon Volcanic Line, which forms a linear chain of non-age progressive volcanoes that straddle the African continental lithosphere and the Atlantic oceanic lithosphere.

In this study we compute numerical models utilising mantle convection modelling software ‘ASPECT’, to investigate the initiation, evolution and potential of melt generation as a result of EDC through geological time, applying these models to the Cameroon Volcanic Line. Our preliminary modelling results suggest that episodic intraplate melting events can indeed be generated through edge-driven convection. But in order to do so, mantle temperatures need to be higher than average to produce sufficient melt from a typical upper mantle source. We therefore investigate the possibility that more enriched mantle lithosphere, destabilised by the assembly and breakup of Pangaea, could flow into the source region of the Cameroon volcanism, allowing the production of similar quantities of melt with less elevated mantle temperatures. We present results on how lithospheric development, evolution and stability, as well as supercontinent cycles can influence intraplate volcanism.