A 3-D Seismic Tomographic Study of Spreading Structures and Smooth Seafloor Generated by Detachment Faulting – the Ultra-Slow Spreading Southwest Indian Ridge at 64˚30’E

At ultra-slow spreading ridges, with full spreading rates less than ~15-20 mm/yr, spreading is accommodated both by limited, highly spatially and temporally segmented magmatism, and by tectonic extension along large-scale oceanic detachment faults, which cut from the seafloor through into the upper mantle and exhume ultramafic material to the seafloor. Detachment faulting is highly asymmetric and alternates in polarity over time, producing a “flip-flopping” effect of subsequent detachment dips. The resulting seafloor in these regions displays a morphology termed “smooth seafloor” comprising elongate, broad ridges, which have peridotite/serpentinite lithologies distinct from the typical basalt-gabbro layered oceanic crustal structure. We refer to the outer layer, above the mantle, in this case as the “crustal section”.

We conducted tomographic travel-time inversion of a 3-D wide-angle seismic dataset acquired over a region of smooth seafloor around 64˚30’E along the Southwest Indian Ridge (SISMOSMOOTH; Cruise MD199), to produce a seismic velocity volume through the crustal section and into the uppermost mantle. The resulting velocities support a non-magmatic origin for the crustal section, up to 100% alteration of originally ultramafic compositions to serpentinite, and a near-constant thickness of ~3.4 km into a transitional Moho zone which overlies the unaltered mantle. Patterns of velocity anomalies are interpreted as changes in the degree of alteration with depth resulting from spatial and temporal variations in fluid-rock interaction, controlled by faulting and tectonic damage processes and progressive porosity infill. The detachment faults show limited along-axis extent and are not simple planar structures at depth, instead mirroring the shapes of the bathymetric ridges they exhume. The boundaries between smooth seafloor and adjacent more magmatic segments are not vertical at depth, suggesting that detachment processes extend laterally at depth beyond their mapped extent seen at the seafloor. Magmatic input is overall highly limited and dominantly takes the form of individual flows forming superficial veneers, but there is one region on the lower part of an exhumed detachment footwall where the magmatic section is up to ~1.5 km thick, which may reflect changes in larger-scale magma segmentation which could contribute to detachment abandonment.