Serpentinite petrology as a key to understanding peridotite-seawater interactions in different submarine geotectonic settings

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This proposal seeks funds to conduct a systematic and comprehensive study of oceanic serpentinites from mid-ocean ridge, continental rifted margin, and fore arc settings. The composition and associations of secondary minerals will be used as a guide to serpentinization processes. Phase petrology and geochemical reaction path modeling are going to be used in reading the messages stored in serpentinites in terms of gas fugacities of the system, solute activities of intergranular fluids, temperature and overall water flux. The role of the rock composition is going to be explicitly addressed. The results are going to provide unparalleled new insights into the process of serpentinization and its consequences for hydrogen (i.e., food for microbes) production, and petrophysical property evolution during serpentinization. The work is going to be an expansion of studies conducted in serpentinites from Leg 209, which provided many new insights into serpentinization processes. It is a logical and timely step to take this approach and apply it to many other sites, since petrographic descriptions and petrophysical data indicate that the reaction pathways during serpentinization are incredibly variable.