A new approach to relate kinetic parameters, composition and temperatures of igneous minerals: the case of Villarrica Volcano 1971 eruption

This contribution provides a new approach to calculate the plagioclase composition of a given igneous rock based on kinetics parameters of crystallization obtained from CSD analyses of plagioclase. The procedure we use includes the following steps: 1) determination of the effective rates of crystal growth and nucleation based on the maximum time interval of mineral crystallization obtained from the CSD segment with the minimum slope and extrapolated to rest of the segments; 2) calculation of the total crystallization time; 3) determination of the time-dependent variation of plagioclase volume fraction based on crystal population density and CSD slopes; 4) calculation of the ideal rates of crystal growth and nucleation; 5) determination of temperature of plagioclase crystallization as a function of the ideal crystal growth rate; 6) determination of plagioclase composition as a function of the ideal crystal growth rate.

We apply our model for plagioclase of 17 samples of The Villarrica Volcano 1971 eruption lava flow. All CSD show two segments with a break at 0.3 mm. The first segment is interpreted as the syn-eruptive crystallization and the second as the within-reservoir crystallization. An interval of 1.5 years as a maximum crystallization time for the syn-eruptive stage was estimated from Cashman’s (1993) expression. Crystal growth rates in the reservoir stage took place during two stages. The first stage varies from 10^-8.9 to 10^-9.4 mm s-1 and the second one varied from 10^-9.4 to 10^-9.1 mm s-1. Finally, the crystal growth rate as high as 10^-7.8 mm s-1 were estimated for the syn-eruptive stage. Nucleation rates varies exponentially from 10^-13 to 10^-8 s-1 in the reservoir stage and from 10^-8 to 10^-1 s^-1 in the syn-eruptive stage. The total crystallization interval varies from 120 to 390 years. A mean total volume fraction of plagioclase of 0.55 was obtained (0.98 for all minerals) whereas a mean value of 0.054 was obtained at the onset of the eruption (0.096 for all minerals). An empirical relation between the crystal growth rate and the XAn was obtained for plagioclases of the studied eruption. Thus, a variation of 232° C for the whole plagioclase crystallization history was obtained.