A zircon case for super-wet arc magmas.

Arc magmas have higher water contents (2-6 wt.% HO) than magmas generated in other tectonic environments, with a growing body of evidence suggesting that some deep arc magmas may be 'super-wet' (>6 wt.% HO).

Slab to back-arc to arc: Fluid and melt pathways through the mantle wedge beneath the Lesser Antilles.

Volatiles expelled from subducted plates promote melting of the overlying warm mantle, feeding arc volcanism. However, debates continue over the factors controlling melt generation and transport, and how these determine the placement of volcanoes. To broaden our synoptic view of these fundamental mantle wedge processes, we image seismic attenuation beneath the Lesser Antilles arc, an end-member system that slowly subducts old, tectonized lithosphere.

How metalliferous brines line Mexican epithermal veins with silver.

We determined the composition of ~30-m.y.-old solutions extracted from fluid inclusions in one of the world's largest and richest silver ore deposits at Fresnillo, Mexico.

Anomalously metal-rich fluids form hydrothermal ore deposits.

Hydrothermal ore deposits form when metals, often as sulfides, precipitate in abundance from aqueous solutions in Earth's crust. Much of our knowledge of the fluids involved comes from studies of fluid inclusions trapped in silicates or carbonates that are believed to represent aliquots of the same solutions that precipitated the ores. We used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to test this paradigm by analysis of fluid inclusions in sphalerite from two contrasting zinc-lead ore systems.