postshield volcanism and catastrophic mass wasting of the waianae volcano oahu hawaii the 3 9 to 2 9 ma waianae volcano is the older of two volcanoes making up the island of oahu hawaii exposed on the volcanic edifice are tholeiitic shield lavas overlain by transitional and alkalic postshield lavas the postshield alkalic cap consists of aphyric hawaiite of the palehua member of the waianae volcanics overlain unconformably by a small volume of alkalic basalt of the kolekole volcanics kolekole volcanics mantle erosional topography including the uppermost slopes of the great lualualei valley on the lee side of the waianae range twenty new k ar dates combined with magnetic polarity data and geologic relationships constrain the ages of lavas of the palehua member to 3 06 2 98 ma and lavas of the kolekole volcanics to 2 97 2 90 ma the geochemical data and the nearly contemporaneous ages suggest that the kolekole volcanics do not represent a completely independent or separate volcanic event from earlier postshield activity thus the kolekole volcanics are reduced in rank becoming the kolekole member of the waianae volcanics magmas of the palehua and kolekole members have similar incompatible element ratios and both suites show evidence for early crystallization of clinopyroxene consistent with evolution at high pressures below the edifice however lavas of the kolekole member are less fractionated and appear to have evolved at greater depths than the earlier palehua hawaiites postshield primary magma compositions of the palehua and kolekole members are consistent with formation by partial melting of mantle material of less than 5 10 relative to waianae shield lavas within the section of palehua member lavas an increase with respect to time of highly incompatible to moderately incompatible element ratios is consistent with a further decrease in partial melting by approximately 1 2 this trend is reversed with the onset of eruption of kolekole member lavas where an increase in extent of partial melting is indicated the relatively short time interval between the eruption of palehua and kolekole member lavas appears to date the initial formation of lualualei valley which was accompanied by a marked change in magmatic conditions we speculate that the mass wasting event separating lavas of the palehua and kolekole members may be related to the formation of a large submarine landslide west and southwest of waianae volcano enhanced decompression melting associated with removal of the equivalent volume of this landslide deposit from the edifice is more than sufficient to produce the modeled increase of 1 2 in extent of melting between the youngest palehua magmas and the posterosional magmas of the kolekole member the association between magmatic change and a giant landsliding event suggests that there may be a general relationship between large mass wasting events and subsequent magmatism in hawaiian volcano evolution

geographical distribution of transitional vgps evidence for non zonal equatorial symmetry during the matuyama brunhes geomagnetic reversal abstract paleomagnetic records of the matuyama brunhes polarity reversal obtained recently from the northern equatorial and southern latitudes of the atlantic sector display a distinct symmetry with respect to the equator the virtual geomagnetic pole vgp paths from the mid latitude sites in the northern and southern hemispheres dsdp site 609 and core v16 58 are nearly coincident tracking northward through the americas the vgp path from the equatorial site odp site 664 tracks northward through eastern asia nearly antipodal to the other two paths modeling results indicate that superimposing an h 1 3 geometry onto a reversing axial dipole explains the sense of equatorial symmetry exhibited by these three records these results are consistent with the bulk of the data available from other records of this polarity transition suggesting that the transitional vgps during this reversal tend to fall along two distinct longitudinal bands the grouping of transitional vgps suggests that there is a strong geographical control over the reversal process an apparent correlation between the longitudinal bands of transitional vgps and the location of the major flux concentrations in the radial component of the historical geomagnetic field at the core mantle boundary 1 suggests that the processes which cause these flux concentrations may have influenced the geometry of the matuyama brunhes transitional field

dipolar reversal states of the geomagnetic field and core mantle dynamics palaeomagnetic records from lavas suggest that at least two specific inclined dipolar field configurations have dominated the reversal process for the past ten million years these long lived states provide a way to explain directional rebounds aborted reversals and the recording in sediments of what appear to be preferred longitudinal paths of the virtual geomagnetic pole the polar orientations correlate with near radial flux concentrations recognizable when today s field is stripped of its axial dipole and with lower mantle seismic anomalies suggesting a tie to deep earth dynamics

longitudinally confined geomagnetic reversal paths from non dipolar transition fields it has long been thought that conditions at the boundary between the core and mantle influence the earth s magnetic field but the supporting evidence is rather indirect1 3 recent palaeomagnetic results suggesting that there are persistent preferred longitudinal paths for the virtual geomagnetic pole vgp during reversals4 would provide the first direct evidence of the solid mantle s influence on the core although their statistical significance has been disputed5 6 the results are potentially exciting because the preferred paths lie close to the pacific rim where the present geomagnetic secular variation changes character2 7 here we present a simple model based on an extension of a previous theory8 that produces reversals with vgp paths confined within relatively narrow longitude bands despite the transition field having a substantially non dipolar structure thus although longitude bias of the vgp paths is definitive evidence for core mantle interaction simple vgp paths are not evidence of near dipolar transition fields

apollo 15 green glass compositional distribution and petrogenesis abstract we have characterized a comprehensive suite of individual green glass beads from apollo 15 soil to determine interelement behavior and to constrain petrogenetic relationships we analyzed 365 particles for trace elements by instrumental neutron activation analysis and analyzed 52 of them selected to cover the compositional ranges observed for trace elements for major elements by electron microprobe analysis we confirm the observation of delano 1979 that the beads comprise discrete compositional groups although two of the groups he denned are further split on the basis of trace element compositions each of the resulting seven groups has distinct average rare earth abundances the coherence between major and trace element data was masked in previous studies by imprecision correlated error and nonrepresentative sampling of the different groups most of the compositional characteristics of the green glasses can be explained by a model for batch equilibrium melting of a nearly homogeneous ultramafic source region when the complicating effects of high pressure and low oxygen fugacity are taken into account the previously puzzling behavior of ni and co as apparently incompatible elements may arise from partial reduction of those elements to the zero oxidation state resulting in low mineral melt partition coefficients the model also offers explanations for why the green glasses form boomerang shaped trends on many two element variation diagrams and why certain compositions groups a and d are more abundant than glasses with other compositions

the steens mountain oregon geomagnetic polarity transition 2 field intensity variations and discussion of reversal models we carried out an extensive paleointensity study of the 15 5 0 3 m y miocene reversed to normal polarity transition recorded in lava flows from steens mountain south central oregon one hundred eighty five samples from the collection whose paleodirectional study is reported by mankinen et al this issue were chosen for paleointensity investigations because of their low viscosity index high curie point and reversibility or near reversibility of the strong field magnetization curve versus temperature application of the thellier stepwise double heating method was very successful yielding 157 usable paleointensity estimates corresponding to 73 distinct lava flows after grouping successive lava flows that did not differ significantly in direction and intensity we obtained 51 distinguishable complete field vectors of which 10 are reversed 28 are transitional and 13 are normal the record is complex quite unlike that predicted by simple flooding or standing nondipole field models it begins with an estimated several thousand years of reversed polarity with an average intensity of 31 5 8 5 t about one third lower than the expected miocene intensity this difference is interpreted as a long term reduction of the dipole moment prior to the reversal when site directions and intensities are considered truly transitional directions and intensities appear almost at the same time at the beginning of the transition and they disappear simultaneously at the end of the reversal large deviations in declination occur during this approximately 4500 1000 year transition period that are compatible with roughly similar average magnitudes of zonal and nonzonal field components at the site the transitional intensity is generally low with an average of 10 9 4 9 t for directions more than 45 away from the dipole field and a minimum of about 5 t the root mean square of the three field components x y and z are of the same order of magnitude for the transitional field and the historical nondipole field at the site latitude however a field intensity increase to pretransitional values occurs when the field temporarily reaches normal directions which suggests that dipolar structure could have been briefly regenerated during the transition in an aborted attempt to reestablish a stationary field changes in the field vector are progressive but jerky with at least two and possibly three large swings at astonishingly high rates each of those transitional geomagnetic impulses occurs when the field intensity is low less than 10 t and is followed by an interval of directional stasis during which the magnitude of the field increases greatly for the best documented geomagnetic impulse the rapid directional change corresponds to a vectorial intensity change of 6700 2700 nt yr 1 which is about 15 50 times larger than the maximum rate of change of the nondipole field observed during the last centuries the occurrence of geomagnetic impulses seems to support reversal models assuming an increase in the level of turbulence within the liquid core during transitions the record closes with an estimated several thousand years of normal polarity with an average intensity of 46 7 20 1 t agreeing with the expected miocene value however the occurrence of rather large and apparently rapid intensity fluctuations accompanied by little change in direction suggests that the newly reestablished dipole was still somewhat unstable

high resolution record of the upper olduvai transition from po valley italy sediments support for dipolar transition geometry abstract a detailed record of the upper olduvai polarity transition composed of 100 transitional directions has been obtained from the crostolo section in northern italy a careful examination of the rock magnetic properties of the sediments using standard paleomagnetic techniques thermomagnetic scanning electron microscopy microprobe x ray diffraction and mossbauer analysis shows that greigite is the main magnetic carrier of the remanence the correlation of a shift in the magnetic record to a small scale sedimentary feature observed in the section indicates that the magnetization was acquired at deposition or very shortly after the virtual geomagnetic pole vgp path is largely confined along a great circle over north and south america 90 west of the site and consists of three stages first the vgp moves to southern mid latitudes then after a period of standstill it comes back to almost true north and finally the south pole is reached in a third step although different from a record from the southern indian ocean this path is virtually identical to those obtained for the same transition from north pacific deep sea cores and partly coincides with a north atlantic record which suggests that a dipolar component may be present in the transitional field during the upper olduvai reversal a review of the recently obtained records of various transitions shows that in more than two thirds of the cases the vgp paths are similarly confined along a meridian over the americas or antipodal to them irrespective of the sampling site and of the sense of the transition although not deterministic this tendency suggests that a similar dipolar component might be present in the transitional fields of other reversals of different ages

the myth of the pacific dipole window the angular dispersion of virtual geomagnetic poles vgp from lava flows is often cited as having been anomalously low in the pacific during the brunhes epoch because the dispersion from hawaiian lavas is said to be much lower than measured elsewhere this led to the concept of the pacific dipole window or pacific non dipole low because lavas tend to be erupted in bursts of activity many of the hawaiian data are serially correlated and thus cannot necessarily be treated as independent observations geochronological controls as are available for hawaii have been used in a previous analysis to thin the data to try to avoid repeated sampling of the same geomagnetic field unfortunately in that analysis the angular dispersion of vgps was calculated about the mean vgp instead of about the spin axis and thus underestimated the dispersion we have therefore reanalyzed the relevant data using the following criteria 1 only those lavas with 95 10 have been considered 2 a latitude dependent cut off angle is used to eliminate those vectors that are not part of the normal secular variation 3 we have developed a statistical method to rationalise those flows that have repeatedly sampled the same geomagnetic field vector because suitable geochronological controls are rarely available application of this new method to the hawaiian data shows excellent agreement with the results from using geochronological controls where possible we have therefore included this method in our overall analysis as expected the resulting global data are compatible with a fisher distribution about the spin axis brunhes age data from hawaii n 96 independent measurements give a vgp angular dispersion about the spin axis of sf 12 4 and for the pacific region as a whole sf 12 5 n 190 between latitudes 15 and 30 north or south these values are the same as sf 12 4 n 160 calculated for the rest of the world in the same latitude range this clearly demonstrates that the hypothesis of the pacific dipole window may confidently be rejected

detailed paleomagnetic study of two volcanic polarity transitions recorded in eastern iceland abstract two sequences of 45 and 49 individual lava flows respectively have been sampled in eastern iceland the two sections range in age from 12 09 to 10 21 ma as reported by watkins and walker watkins n walker g p l 1977 magnetostratigraphy of eastern iceland am j sci 277 513 584 and are labelled as profiles c and d stepwise alternating field af and thermal demagnetizations accompanied by investigations of rock magnetic properties indicate that the magnetization is primarily carried by titanomagnetite demagnetization experiments have identified eight and six transitional lavas respectively for these profiles the transitional virtual geomagnetic poles vgps of the r n profile c reversal are located mainly between patagonia and antarctica with a tendency of the virtual poles to move towards west coast of south america subsequently traveling to the northern hemisphere through several discrete steps located in the middle part of south america then to west africa and on to central asia before the poles settle into normal polarity the second and younger vgp path corresponding to profile d is a path characterized by a reverse to normal to reverse r n r motion of the virtual poles this path is characterized by poles located in west antarctica patagonia and the western and eastern part of south america the passage from the southern to the northern hemisphere is also through a discrete sets of steps along the southwestern pacific followed by a rapid motion to the northern siberian region continuing to the western equatorial part of south america before moving on to the central region of asia followed by a motion to the western pacific prior to the final move to the eastern part of antarctica the data from eastern iceland based on highly reliable transitional results as indicated by the demagnetizations and rock magnetic experiments derived from relatively spaced sites and different ages seem to indicate that the eastern icelandic high latitude 66 n profiles studied have several persistent transitional paleofield features that are uniquely observed at those sites particularly when compared to other volcanic records located at lower latitudes

the last two geomagnetic polarity reversals recorded in high deposition rate sediment drifts high resolution records of geomagnetic polarity transitions are rare owing to the difficulty of preserving in the geological record details of a process with a duration of only a few thousand years lavas can record the instantaneous field on cooling but lava records are themselves discontinuous and therefore polarity transition fields are seldom captured sedimentary records are more continuous but typical deep sea sedimentation rates of a few cm kyr 1are too low to record transition fields adequately here we report transition records from north atlantic drift deposits with high sedimentation rates 12 cm kyr 1 at the ocean drilling program sites 983 and 984 virtual geomagnetic polar vgp paths are similar within and between sites for the last two geomagnetic reversals attesting to a memory effect spanning back to back reversals the complex vgp paths feature two vgp clusters one located in northeastern asia and the other in the south atlantic ocean off south america and provide a link between the longitudinally constrained transitional vgps often recorded in sediments1 2 which represent highly smoothed renditions of transition fields and the scattered transitional vgps3 and vgp clusters4 observed in lava records

paleosecular variation during sequential geomagnetic reversals from hawaii abstract paleomagnetic directions measured from 175 flows in four volcanic sequences on the island of o ahu hawaii cover about 0 3 m y of geomagnetic field changes and include detailed records of the successive gilbert gauss 3 57 ma and lower mammoth reversals 3 33 ma the dominant pattern of the directional changes is the presence of large inclination variations with increasing amplitude and steep values during the transitional periods the morphology of these recurring features during different transitions is reminiscent of the characteristics of the non dipole field inferred from studies of paleosecular variation in the pacific these observations are consistent with transitional mechanisms yielding the emergence of non dipole components with characteristics similar to those during periods of stable polarity the three different records of the lower mammoth reversal show that clusters of transitional pole positions are not reproducible between parallel sections and are thus linked to local eruptions and not to long lived states of the transitional field

how the geomagnetic field vector reverses polarity a highly detailed record of both the direction and intensity of the earth s magnetic field as it reverses has been obtained from a miocene volcanic sequence the transitional field is low in intensity and is typically non axisymmetric geomagnetic impulses corresponding to astonishingly high rates of change of the field sometimes occur suggesting that liquid velocity within the earth s core increases during geomagnetic reversals

matuyama brunhes transition recorded in lava flows of the chilean andes evidence for dipolar fields during reversals the transitional behavior exhibited by earth9s magnetic field during polarity reversals holds the key to understanding the complexities of the field interpretation of the severely limited reversal data set however remains controversial discussion centers around the nature of pole paths during transitions and their possible relation to other geophysical phenomena paleomagnetic data from volcan tatara san pedro in the central chilean andes lat 36 s long 71 w provide the first record of the matuyama brunhes reversal from south america and only the third transitional record from the southern hemisphere a stratigraphic section of ten lava flows yielded intermediate pole positions that center in australia the mean pole is 16 8 s 133 0 e k ar analyses of two of these flows provided dates of 768 8 ka and 763 14 ka ages coincident with the established matuyama brunhes boundary the clustering of these transitional poles strengthens the hypothesis that earth9s magnetic field retains a strong dipole component during reversals

the temporal record of magmatism at cerro uturuncu bolivian altiplano twenty six new 40ar 39ar plateau ages for 23 lavas and domes from the uturuncu volcano in the altiplano of sw bolivia reveal a protracted eruptive history from 1050 5 to 250 5 ka eruptions have been exclusively effusive producing some 50 km3 of high k dacites and silicic andesites bimodal mineral compositions complex mineral textures the presence of andesitic magmatic enclaves within dacites and linear chemical trends on binary element plots all indicate that magma mixing is an important petrogenetic process at uturuncu post 458 ka distinct high and low mgo cr magmas are resolved these magmas erupt during similar times suggesting that eruptions are tapping different parts of the magma system albeit from the same vent system volcanic and petrological features are consistent with the existence of a vertically extensive magma mush column beneath uturuncu and calculated buoyancy forces are sufficient to drive effusive eruptions eruptive activity is episodic with six eruptive periods separated by hiatuses of 50 kyr cumulative volume curves demonstrate that the majority of the edifice formed between 595 and 505 ka the episodicity of eruptions is most likely to be related to fluctuations in the magma supply to the underlying altiplano puno magma body

inclination shallowing and preferred transitional vgp paths transitional vgp paths recorded in sediments cluster into two antipodal preferred longitude bands that tend to lie 90 away from their site longitudes the latter also being clustered vgp paths obtained from lava flow sequences though much fewer appear not to show these biases suggesting a rock magnetic influence on vgp paths recorded in sediments inclination shallowing of detrital magnetic remanence enhanced under low transitional field strengths is the most likely candidate we illustrate the effects of inclination shallowing by applying a simple shallowing model tan ir f tan ia where ia is the inclination of the magnetic remanence and ia is the inclination of the ambient field with field variation to hypothetical data sets shallowing induced clustering increases as f decreases and becomes extreme as f approaches 0 1 we have used the model to de shallow the available set of transitional vgp sediment records for various values of f the probability that the observations arise from inclination shallowing of a uniform random distribution of paths increases as f decreases when f drops to 0 13 there is a 50 chance of getting at least as much grouping as observed to decide if inclination shallowing is a dominant factor in the clustering we need to know whether such extreme shallowing is widespread in sedimentary records under transitional field conditions field and laboratory redeposition data are not yet adequate to resolve this question

transitional field behavior during the gilbert gauss and lower mammoth reversals recorded in lavas from the wai anae volcano o ahu hawaii using a portable fluxgate magnetometer we identified two polarity transitions one a reversed to normal r n in a 600 m section called pu u heleakala and second a normal to reversed n r in a 300 m section known as pu u kamai leunu of superposed basalt flows on the western flank of wai anae volcano one of the two volcanoes that compose the hawaiian island of o ahu volcanic stratigraphic studies suggest that the r n reversal corresponds to the gilbert gauss polarity boundary and the n r reversal correlates with the lower mammoth polarity transition we drilled an average of six to eight samples from each of the lava flows 36 flows from the heleakala and 29 from the kamai leunu spanning the two sections lightning induced secondary magnetization is common in some flows requiring detailed alternating field demagnetization to remove it and to isolate the primary directions thermal demagnetization proved to be ineffective and if employed could lead to incorrect identification of lightning dominated remanence as primary our laboratory experiments indicate that we have successfully identified one transition zone on each section composed of at least seven to eight transitional lava flows the transitional vgps of the gilbert gauss reversal are located in northwestern africa sri lanka and borneo whereas for the lower mammoth reversal the transitional vgps are located in northern africa and in the southern atlantic these observations are not in agreement with the hypothesized antipodal longitudinal bands over the americas and the western pacific rim the two transitions are characterized by periods of high negative inclinations corresponding to vgps in africa about 180 away from the site longitude the obtained vgp paths could be explained by a transitional field affected by anomalous geomagnetic fields that exist beneath the pacific hemisphere these recurrent nonaxisymmetric components in the transitional fields suggest that lateral variations in lower mantle properties influence the geodynamo

confounding influence of magnetic fabric on sedimentary records of a field reversal recent compilations of geomagnetic reversal records have generated a controversy as to whether the geomagnetic field is geographically biased during polarity transitions at present there is general agreement that the virtual geomagnetic poles recorded from cenozoic sediments preferentially lie over the americas or the antipodal longitude yet such a preference is not statistically established however it is intriguing that the claimed preferred paths lie 90 away from the site longitude although this may be partly inherent in the very poor geographical distribution of the sites we prefer not to rely on fortuitous coincidences several authors have argued that sedimentary palaeomagnetic records may be modified by artefacts linked to the acquisition of magnetization here we report that in two sedimentary records of the upper olduvai reversal from confidence hills california the declinations of the remanent magnetization recorded during the reversal are similar to the directions of the maximum horizontal axes of the ellipsoids of magnetic anisotropy this supports the idea that at times of low geomagnetic intensity such as during a reversal factors other than the geomagnetic field influence the orientation of elongated grains

palaeomagnetic constraints on the geometry of the geomagnetic field during reversals palaeomagnetic records of the path of the pole during reversals of the earth s magnetic field provide a test of the hypothesis that dipolar or low order axisymmetric components of the field dominate during reversals multiple records of reversals during the past 12 myr show no simple or consistent geographical pattern although a more robust analysis of the transitional field awaits a greater number of well distributed sampling sites the present data are not inconsistent with the simplest models in which a field reminiscent of the non dipole component of the present day field becomes dominant

paleointensity variations across the last geomagnetic reversal at la palma canary islands spain a detailed volcanic record of absolute paleointensity has been obtained for the period encompassing the last geomagnetic reversal from a succession of 69 distinct lava flows in two adjacent sections on the island of la palma the correlation between the two sections relies on the positions of the brunhes matuyama boundary and on the flow chronology obtained by a refined potassium argon k ar dating technique several pretransitional flows exhibit very shallow paleomagetic inclinations but they cannot be considered as really transitional paleointensity experiments conducted on 288 specimens provided 168 successful determinations 14 were obtained after correction for 50 lava flows that were considered to represent 45 distinct units the evolution of the paleofield intensity can be constructed by assuming uniform extrusion rates between three dated lava flows the period preceding the transition is characterized by large fluctuations with typical peak to peak amplitudes between 20 and 40 t which decrease down to 7 t prior to the transition the 100 kyr long interval following the reversal is associated with field intensities as high as 60 t and depict a strong and rapid restoration of the dipole field the virtual dipole moments vdms have been compared with sedimentary vdms generated from the record of relative paleointensity from ocean drilling program site 851 to which have been added non dipole components similar to the present geomagnetic field a reasonable fit can be made between the two curves which implies variations in the eruption rates but not incompatible with the uncertainties in the k ar age determinations thus these results can support but do not fully demonstrate the existence of asymmerical saw toothed variations in field intensity

high resolution sedimentary record of a geomagnetic reversal a detailed study of a geomagnetic reversal shows that during the transition the geomagnetic field undergoes both short and long term fluctuations the first are thought to be linked to the reversal process the second are present with the same time constants both before and during the reversal this suggests that the secular variation at least in its longer period terms is not affected by the reversal of the main field this feature has important consequences for the validity of the frozen flux approximation

longitudinal confinement of geomagnetic reversal paths as a possible sedimentary artefact the positions of the virtual geomagnetic pole vgp during a large number of reversals of the earth s magnetic field seem to show a remarkable confinement to longitudes over the americas or to antipodal longitudes1 2 although it has been argued that this confinement is statistically insufficiently constrained3 it has also been pointed out4 that the same bands of longitude appear in other geophysical observations such as the pattern of fluid motion in the outer core and regions of higher seismic velocities in the lower mantle suggesting a causal relationship here we show that longitudinal confinement of vgps can arise from the smoothing of non antipodal stable directions just before and after a geomagnetic reversal because of the filtering effect of the remanence acquisition process in sediments the origin of this non antipodality is still uncertain and must remain speculative until more reversal records become available that include sufficiently long pre and post transitional intervals