Research Projects

Understanding the location and form of magma storage in the crust is crucial for modeling Earth's fundamental processes, such as crustal growth, ore deposit formation, and predicting geohazard related to volcanism. Magma generation involves partial melting of rocks and melt separation from the residual solid matrix. The geochemical diversity of magmas and the refractory characteristics of many plutonic rocks are caused by the separation of crystals and melt, sometimes complicated by magma mixing and assimilation of host rocks. The first conceptual model for continental flood basalt was proposed by Cox (1980), which suggests magmas originate in the mantle due to the interaction of mantle plumes to the base of the lithosphere. The melt rises towards the crust, where rheological and density contrasts may cause the melt to pond and form large primitive magma chambers. Geophysical studies have struggled to detect these magma chambers, with observations better explained by large volumes of hot igneous rock in the crust. No geophysical experiment has been successful in detecting the possible reminiscence of the magma chamber responsible for Deccan volcanism at 65 Ma when the fast-moving Indian plate passed over the Reunion mantle plume in the southern latitude. Knowledge of magma in the system is critical to model the quantum of CO2 outflux responsible for P-T boundary catastrophe. This multi-institutional project aims to map the nature of crust and upper mantle in terms of seismic wave velocities using state-of-the-art seismological tools to a dense network of seismological stations in the southern sector of Deccan traps.