ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION
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Project Information
Principal Investigator
PROPOSAL COVER SHEET
Grantee Organization:
Erik H Hauri, staff scientist
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Carnegie Institution of Washington
5241 Broad Branch Rd NW
Washington DC 20015 USA
202-478-8471, ehauri@ciw.edu
Department of Terrestrial
Magnetism
Carnegie Institution of
Washington
Amount Requested:
Requested Start Date:
$1,250,000
April 1, 2015
Requested End Date: March 31, 2017
Reservoirs & Fluxes Community - Deep Carbon Observatory
Project Goal
To advance substantially and measurably the qualitative and quantitative understanding of reservoirs and
fluxes of Earth’s deep carbon and thus contribute to meeting the decadal goals of the Deep Carbon
Observatory (DCO).
Objectives
To make important discoveries in 5 areas: (1) degassing deep carbon through volcanic processes; (2)
degassing deep carbon through tectonic and other diffuse processes; (3) origin, age, and depth of diamonds
and mineral inclusions found within them; (4) fluid dynamics of carbon transport in volcanoes and global
circulation of carbon from Earth’s surface to its core; and (5) chemical forms, mineral hosts, and reactions
of carbon moving between reservoirs, both shallow and deep.
Proposed Activities
The RF Community will nurture research activities of incipient international scientific initiatives on volcanic
outgassing (DECADE) and natural diamonds (DMGC) that engage dozens of researchers in 11 countries. We
will seed and promote a new initiative on tectonic outgassing in continental areas and develop the first
geodynamical reference models for circulation of deep carbon within volcanic systems and within Earth
from crust to core. We will conduct key high-pressure, high-temperature lab experiments with direct
impact on the chemistry of deep carbon in these four initiatives. The RF Community will cooperate with the
data science and engagement teams to develop databases, to disseminate the chapters its members
authored for the DCO’s Carbon in Earth volume and other findings, and improve its own organization.
Expected Products
Our products are both expert networks and the products their members create. Collaborating with
national volcano observatories, DECADE will begin to establish the first global network for direct
measurement of volcanic CO2 flux and produce a new database on eruptions and volcanic gases. DMGC will
begin assembling an international reference collection of diamonds for research and produce a
geochemical database of diamonds and inclusions. The new international science teams researching
tectonic fluxes of deep carbon and producing geodynamic models for carbon flux within volcanic systems
and from crust to core will lay groundwork of measurements and models later to be used by all
Communities of DCO. All teams will contribute to the scientific literature.
Expected Outcomes
Outcomes will include instruments, databases, models, insights, and trained people aiming for and
achieving transformational understanding of Earth’s deep carbon cycle communicated within and outside
the scientific community. The new teams nucleated and nurtured by the Reservoirs & Fluxes Community
will spark participation of other allied research groups worldwide, attract resources, and build communities
sustainable beyond the current decade.
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Reservoirs & Fluxes Community—The Deep Carbon Observatory
Erik Hauri (Carnegie Institution), Marie Edmonds (Cambridge University) Co-Chairs
Introduction
The Reservoirs & Fluxes (RF) Community of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is
approaching the midpoint of its decadal mission to develop strategy, priorities, organization, and
nurturing of research to make progress on its Decadal Goals, the most important of which is to
determine the overall net direction and magnitude of the deep carbon flux across the crust-mantle
boundary. In this proposal we describe how we will advance further toward achieving these goals,
and thus a detailed understanding of the deep carbon cycle, with special emphasis on carbon deep in
the crust and in the upper mantle, but also extending to Earth’s core and atmosphere, in order to
achieve a systemic understanding of carbon sources and sinks. The RF Community will seek to
incorporate several important recommendations that have emerged from the DCO Midterm Report
conducted by the DCO Secretariat, and to engage with international teams of scientists in 4 research
areas that collectively address the RF Decadal Goals.
Reservoirs & Fluxes Decadal Goals
•
(1) Establish open access, continuous information streams on volcanic gas emission and
related activity.
•
(2) Determine the chemical forms and distribution of carbon in Earth’s deepest interior
•
(3) Determine seafloor C budget and global rates of carbon input into subduction zones
•
(4) Estimate the net direction and magnitude of tectonic carbon fluxes from the mantle and
crust to the atmosphere.
•
(5) Develop a robust overarching global carbon cycle model through deep time, including
the earliest Earth, and coevolution of the geosphere and biosphere
•
(6) Produce quantitative models of global C cycling at various scales, and the planetary
scale (mantle convection), tectonic scale (subduction zone, orogeny, rift, volcano), and
reservoir scale (core, mantle, crust, hydrosphere).
The four proposed research areas are degassing of deep carbon through volcanic processes
(DECADE); degassing of deep carbon through tectonic and other diffuse processes; age and depth
of origin of natural diamonds and the mineral inclusions found within them (DMGC); and the
modeling of geophysical fluid dynamic processes of carbon transport in volcanoes and global
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circulation of carbon from Earth’s surface to its core. These four research directions all will be
supported by efforts to enhance the use of deep carbon cycle models and geochemical databases to
provide theoretical and observational constraints in the Earth’s deep carbon cycle.
Our motivation remains that the sizes, ages, distributions, and forms of carbon in deep-Earth
reservoirs have been only vaguely discerned, and the abundance of carbon in each reservoir is
poorly known, even though the deep-Earth carbon cycle contains the vast majority of Earth’s carbon
[Marty & Tolstikhin, 1998; Saal et al., 2002]. Earth’s interior contains multiple carbon-bearing
reservoirs, including the diamond-bearing mantle beneath continents and CO2-bearing mantle
beneath the oceans. At greater depths of Earth’s transition zone (410-660 km) and lower mantle
(660-2960 km), abundance of free oxygen decreases and the population of possible major carbonbearing mineral phases expands rapidly [e.g. Dasgupta & Hirschmann, 2010; Dasgupta, 2013;
Oganov et al., 2013]. The solubility of carbon in iron-rich metal is considerable [e.g., (Wood, 1993;
Ni & Keppler, 2013; Wood et al., 2013)], yet the carbon content of Earth’s core is largely unknown.
One reason for our ignorance is that the deep carbon cycle receives a small fraction of the research
attention compared with the surface carbon cycle, and this emphasis has translated into a lack of
instruments, measurements, models, expert networks, and appropriately trained personnel. But we
must acknowledge – with excitement - that some of the problems are also at the limits of knowledge
and technique.
Progress in understanding reservoirs and fluxes of deep carbon should bring both societal and
scientific benefit. The surface and deep-Earth carbon cycles meet in areas that encompass some of
the most extreme natural hazards on the planet. Volcanic eruptions on continents, ocean islands,
ocean ridges, and convergent margins deliver enormous amounts of carbon to Earth’s atmosphere,
always passively, sometimes actively, and occasionally catastrophically. On geological time scales,
discontinuities in the deep carbon cycle have caused mass species extinction (e.g. Black et al.,
2012). If volcanoes deliver the breath of deep Earth, then surely its pulse is read in the seismic
activity of earthquakes. Great earthquakes signal the slow but steady destruction of tectonic plates at
Earth’s convergent margins, a process that continues as deep as one-third of the depth to the coremantle boundary, dragging carbonated oceanic crust into deep Earth. Yet the balance of delivery
and return fluxes of carbon between Earth’s surface and interior is so poorly known that we don’t
even know if the net flux of carbon is into or out of deep Earth (Dasgupta, 2013); this is perhaps the
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single most important scientific question that the RF Community can answer. Some of this
uncertainty may be due to the more cryptic, diffuse migration of carbon to the atmosphere in areas
of tectonic activity, where continents stretch and mountains form and erode yet still seem to release
carbon sourced from Earth’s mantle (e.g. Sano et al., 1986; Burton et al., 2013). Some of the
uncertainty may be due to an incomplete accounting of the magnitude of carbon fluxes and their
consistency with other geochemical and geophysical observables that are well known today, and
can be examined in the record of the geologic past.
Overview of the Reservoirs & Fluxes Community - Past and Future Activities
Reservoirs & Fluxes 2015-2016 Budget Overview
DECADE
$550,000
Tectonic Fluxes
$100,000
DMGC
$200,000
Global Carbon Modeling
$200,000
Administrative/Workshops
$200,000
The past four years of RF activity has been largely conducted in the four important areas
described above, and this proposal seeks to maintain the momentum achieved in all four initiatives.
We have overseen the establishment of two new international scientific groups in volcanic activity
(DECADE) and natural diamonds (DMGC) that engage dozens of researchers in 11 countries. We
have begun another initiative on the quantification of the tectonic flux of deep carbon in continental
areas, and have initiated the assembly of the first geodynamical reference models for the circulation
of deep carbon within volcanic systems and within the Earth from crust to core. A modest amount
of funds were set aside for administration of the RF Office at Carnegie.
The DECADE (Deep Earth Carbon Degassing) group is aimed at improving considerably our
understanding of the sources and strengths of CO2 degassing from volcanoes, by evaluating in detail
the main volcanic sources, and by monitoring in real time carefully selected and representative
volcanic systems. The goal is to establish CO2 monitoring networks on 25 of the world’s 150 most
actively degassing volcanoes and undertake related studies (direct gas sampling and analysis, melt
inclusions, satellite monitoring) to provide new data for direct degassing of deep Earth carbon to the
hydrosphere.
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Jay Ague and Olivier Beyssac are developing a new action called Tectonic fluxes of Carbon,
which aims at qualifying and quantifying non-volcanic fluxes of carbons between the Earth's
interior (crust, mantle), and the surface. They have held a workshop before the 2013 AGU meeting
that gathered about 50 scientists from 8 countries. This full day of discussion was organized around
three scientific sessions entitled ‘Carbon Cycle and C-bearing fluids and minerals’, ‘Deep carbon in
orogens’ and ‘Low-temperature carbon cycling’. One of the main conclusions of the workshop was
that dedicated field studies and measurement campaigns are needed and various field targets were
identified including the Himalayas and the Appenines/Western Alps/Corsica systems. Alpine
Corsica offers world-class exposures of high-pressure metamorphic rocks and was selected as a first
target area for a forthcoming workshop to be held in September 2015, and following field studies to
investigate the fate of carbon in subduction zones as well as processes like carbonate
devolatilization or dissolution and graphite formation or oxidation.
The DMGC (Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon) group is an international network
of scientists studying natural diamonds, their inclusions, and their conditions of formation to
understand the deep Earth carbon cycle. Natural diamonds are direct samples of carbon from
Earth’s mantle and directly record the deep carbon cycle back through geologic time. This group
seeks to establish a new international infrastructure for diamond research, including both virtual and
actual registered sample collections and a database of diamond and inclusion geochemistry, to
advance studies of natural diamonds and experiments on diamond-forming fluids/melts for the
understanding of carbon mobility in Earth’s mantle today and through geologic time.
The Global Modeling of Deep Carbon Circulation effort began in June 2014 and has just
engaged the participation of researchers from 5 research groups in the US. Efforts are beginning to
build a series of models that will quantitatively track the forms and movements of carbon within
mid-ocean ridges (M. Behn, Woods Hole), subduction zones (M. Spiegelman, Columbia), within
mantle plumes/hotspots, the deep mantle via mantle convection, and core-mantle interaction (E.
Hauri, Carnegie), and connections between the deep Earth, surface and atmosphere (D. Bercovici,
Yale; A. Lenardic, Rice). The DCO Modeling and Visualization Workshop, to be held at the
Smithsonian Institution in May 2015, will be organized by Elizabeth Cottrell (Smithsonian), Louise
Kellogg (UC Davis and CIG, Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics) and Richard Katz
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(Oxford, UK); this workshop will identify additional participants for the building of RF’s deep
carbon cycle global modeling efforts.
The diversity of the on-going state of the art studies, as well as the quality and number of
involved teams and institutions (among the best volcano monitoring national observatories) attest to
the dynamism and wealth of research developed in the frame of the Reservoirs & Fluxes
community.
Important among the four initiatives described above is the engagement of the geophysical fluid
dynamics community to construct a global deep-Earth circulation model consistent with known
constraints from geochemical and geophysical observables, and informed by known changes in
those observables through past geologic time. This deep-Earth circulation model could incorporate
both known and newly-identified pathways of carbon transport between Earth’s surface and its
interior, and be updated by new information on carbon fluxes along these pathways, as measured by
the various scientific initiatives within RF and the other DCO Communities. This activity will also
address the recommendations of several reviews of the RF program and the DCO Mid-Term Report
to incorporate research on the evolution of the deep carbon cycle through time, including the origin
of carbon delivery to the earth Earth. The modeling of changes in the carbon cycle through time will
be best constrained and informed by data and observations from the DMGC group as they study
diamonds of a variety of ages, as well as known changes in the composition of the atmosphere and
oceans through geologic time. This global modeling will represent a maturation of the deep Earth
community comparable to efforts in fields as diverse as climate and economics, and will form an
important legacy after the DCO has formally run its course. Convincing models may take many
years to build but the initiation of the platform itself matters greatly for achieving better
communication among sub-disciplines, identifying data needs and inconsistencies, and for
synthesizing the results of the DCO communities at the conclusion of the decadal program.
These and other research projects initiated by the RF Community over the past 2 years have
involved 34 new young scientists as DCO researchers from 8 countries, (12 female, 22 male),
including 13 new postdoctoral researchers (Marion LeVoyer, CIW, USA; Jared Marske, CIW,
USA; Andreas Enggist, ANU, Australia; Sébastien Facq, Lyon, France; Anja Rosenthal, Bayreuth,
Germany; Jennifer Mabry, Nancy, France; Tefan Lan, Nancy, France; Christoph Popp,
Smithsonian, USA; Brendan McCormick, Smithsonian, USA; Christoph Kern, USGS, USA; Yves
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Moussallam, ISTO, France; Sylvia Schmitz, Goethe University, Germany; Mariangela Schiazza, U.
Padova, Italy), 19 new graduate students (Marion Lytle, URI; Maryjo Brounce, URI; Ekaterina
Kiseeva, ANU; Prokopiy Vasiliev, ANU; Yuan Li, Bayreuth; Brian Franz, Scripps; Santiago
Arellano, Chalmers, Sweden; Vladimir Conde, Chalmers, Sweden; Francesca Piccoli, IMPMC
Paris, France; Xu Chu, Yale, USA; Meng Tian, Yale, USA; Nahum Clements, Cambridge, UK;
Luis Dasilveira, U. Hawaii, USA; Caterina Liccioli, U. Rio Negro, Argentina; Maria Clara
Lamberti, U. Buenos Aires, Argentina; Jennifer Rudloff, Goethe University, Germany; Christopher
Beyer, Bayreuth, Germany; Valerio Cerantola, Bayreuth, Germany; Riccardo Reali, U. Padova,
Italy), and 2 undergraduate students (James Eguchi, UCLA; Louis Dumas, Johns Hopkins).
With regard to leverage, over the past 24 months we identified $17.1M in allied research projects
that address the scientific agenda and decadal goals of the RF Community. This total includes
$1.2M of in-kind support identified by the RF membership, $5M in allied ERC grants from
DECADE and DMGC researchers, and includes the new $10M UK NERC Deep Earth Volatiles
programme “Volatiles, Geodynamics and Solid Earth Controls on the Habitable Planet” that was
aided by the participation and endorsement of all communities within the DCO.
Reservoirs & Fluxes Program (2015-2016)
The current and future leveraging of work in the RF Community is described in more detail
below.
(1) Volcanic Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE)
Chair Tobias Fischer; Co-Chair Nicole Bobrowski; Vice-Chair Patrick Allard
To sharpen global estimates of fluxes, this effort aims to install CO2 monitoring networks on 25
of the world’s 150 most actively degassing volcanoes, and undertake related studies (direct gas
sampling & analysis, melt inclusions, satellite monitoring) to provide new data for direct degassing
of deep Earth carbon to the hydrosphere. The direct delivery of carbon from volcanoes to the
hydrosphere represents one of the largest fluxes and pathways on Earth, and among all such
pathways is the one can be most readily constrained in a decadal program.
Current Status of CO2 monitoring Network
The June 2014 DECADE leadership meeting in Paris emphasized the presentation of current
activities and results by DECADE members as the foundation for discussion of a path forward over
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the next two years. In particular, the strategy to use the existing technologies (NOVAC miniDOAS
scanning) to measure SO2 flux and combine those fluxes with measurements of CO2/SO2 ratios in
volcanic plumes using existing technology resulted in a substantial increase of CO2 flux monitored
volcanoes globally within only 10 months of implementation of this strategy. Currently twelve
volcanoes are monitored globally for CO2 flux and five of these primarily using DECADE support.
In addition, Kilauea is expected to being monitored for CO2 permanently in the next months by
other groups collaborating with DECADE. Current network activities continue to require support
from DECADE and other sources. The installations of MultiGAS instruments at Poas, Turrialba,
Masaya and Galeras have been very successful and data are being transmitted essentially
continuously (Fig. 1). Figure 2 shows an example of data collected at Masaya, Nicaragua in 2014.
Selection of future sites for CO2 monitoring and targeted campaigns
The selection of future sites was guided by a survey of the DECADE community (approximately 80
members). We received 15 responses and after extended discussions of science questions, logistical
feasibility and budgetary constraints, the BOD and meeting participants decided that White Island,
New Zealand and Nevado del Ruiz, Colombia have highest priority for addition to the DECADE
continuous CO2 flux monitoring network. Lower priority is Merapi, Indonesia and Gorely,
Kamchatka if logistics and local support permit (Figure 1). White Island would be very well suited
for a Deep Life – RF joint field site.
In addition to the proposed network volcanoes, we selected Ubinas, Peru and Oldoinyo
Lengai, Tanzania for targeted campaigns to determine their CO2 flux. Ubinas is poorly studied but
likely has high CO2 emissions based on recent observations. It is located in an interesting tectonic
setting where the subduction regime changes along the South American Arc.
Ubinas gas
composition would be a good contribution to understanding variations along the arc to tie in with
observations that we are making in Chile and Colombia. Oldoinyo Lengai is the world’s only
currently active carbonatite yet is CO2 flux has only been measured directly in the 1990’s and that
value currently places it as the sixth highest CO2 emitter in the world. We feel that it is very
important to repeat such measurements to confirm that Oldoinyo Lengai is still a significant CO2
emitter. In addition this volcano is one of the few continuous emitters in the East African Rift and
understanding the controls of its emissions will provide significant insights into the mantle
degassing processes in rift environments.
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Figure 1. Photographs of DECADE MultiGAS installations at target volcanoes in Central America.
Figure 2: CO2 flux in tons/day from
Masaya, Nicaragua measured and recorded
with DECADE instrumentation.
The
increase in CO2 flux in August 2014
represents the highest CO2 flux ever
recorded at Masaya; work is in progress to
monitor possible correlations between gas
chemistry and seismic activity as new data
is streamed from the volcano.
Slide
provided by A. Aiuppa.
30000
CO2 flux (Tons/day)
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
01/2014
03/2014
05/2014
07/2014
09/2014
The DECADE leadership and participants also felt very strongly that multi-disciplinary
campaigns including several DECADE members need to be made to remote, unstudied volcanoes
that are currently characterized by high SO2 fluxes according to satellite data. These are shown in
Figure 3 and are: Karangetan, Soputan, Lokon in Sulawesi; Dukono Ibu, Gamalama in Halmahera;
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as well as Manam, Ulaun and Bagana in Papua New Guinea. We envision DECADE members with
a number of different approaches to collect samples and measurements at these volcanoes to
characterize their gas emissions, compositions and sources. We would collect recent tephra samples
would for petrology and melt inclusion work. For all localities we can count on logistical support
by the local observatories and we would spread these two campaigns (one Indonesia one PNG) over
two years.
Figure 3: Proposed DECADE multi-disciplinary targets in Sulawesi, Halmahera and PNG.
Figure 4: Kīlauea summit photograph (left) and SO2 camera image (right) obtained from a distance
of ~2 km. SO2 camera data are displayed in near real-time (updated every 5 minutes) along with
visual and infrared images of the Overlook Crater. Provided by Christoph Kern.
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New Technologies and a selection of significant advances
SO2 Camera (Christoph Kern, USGS)
The SO2 camera combined with a miniDOAS-type spectrometer provides significant advancement
of our abilities to measure SO2 emissions from volcanoes at high frequencies and determine plume
velocities that are needed for flux calculations. Such a system is fully operational at Kilauea and
can be accessed through the USGS HVO web site (Figure 4). Also at Kilauea, Cindy Werner
(USGS) has used the eddy covariance method to determine the CO2 flux that is degassing from the
volcano. Her findings show that significantly more CO2 is degassing from fissures and cracks than
from the lava lake (Fig. 5).
Figure 5: Eddy covariance determinations of CO2 flux from Kilauea summit. Note that several CO2
‘hot-spots’ were determined by this method. More CO2 is degassing from cracks around the summit
than from the lava lake. Provided by C. Werner.
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Figure 6: IEDA DECADE data base portal http://decade.iedadata.org. Volcanoes can be selected
and user is taken to EarthChem data base with rock data. Future links will include link to MaGa
volcanic emissions data base and GVP eruption data base. Link provided by Kerstin Lehnert,
LDEO.
Other activities that were identified over the next two years and require support
Data Base:
The DECADE data base effort includes work at EarthChem, Global Volcanism
Program (Smithsonian) and INGV, Italy through MaGa. These three data base efforts will provide
an unprecedented framework to access volcanic gas compositions and volcanic emissions.
Interconnection of these databases will allow the user explore new connections between volcanic
emissions, volcanic activity and petrological constraints. A DECADE portal has been built at
IEDA/EarthChem and is currently being extended to include connections to MaGa and the GVP
eruptions data base (http://decade.iedadata.org and Figure 6). Together, the DECADE efforts will
make progress on RF Decadal Goals 1, 2, 4 and 6, and will address the topics of Earth’s Carbon
Budget, Satellite Observations of Carbon Emissions, Building the DCO Network, Developing Data
Infrastructure, and Modeling and Visualization that were identified and highlighted in the DCO
Mid-Term Report.
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Science Questions for the next two years and beyond
We identified several ‘big science’ questions that we would like to address over the next two years.
The selection of volcanoes for monitoring and targeted campaigns is reflected in these questions.
Q1: What controls the CO2/SO2 ratio and how does it vary from arc to arc and between arcs and
extensional (rift) environments?
Q2: Why are some volcanoes ‘big degassers’ and emit extremely large amounts of gas without any
significant eruptions?
Q3: What are the contributions of non-volcanic CO2 emissions to the global budget?
Q4: How do we best extrapolate measured emissions to a global CO2 emission budget?
DCO-DECADE legacies
We identified four legacy projects that we expect to be sustainable beyond the life of the Deep
Carbon Observatory as currently supported by Carnegie with help from Sloan:
Network
Overlap between deep carbon science and volcano monitoring/hazards and climate modeling.
Involvement of NSF directorates and USGS needed.
Data Base
Long-lived data base of emissions and gas compositions needs to be achieved through stable
sustainable funding sources. Expand collaborations with IEDA and Smithsonian.
Instrument Pool
Establish a sustainable instrument pool similar to the geophysics community. This would need
support from NSF and European funding agencies.
Capacity building
Education of observatory staff and young scientists through collaborations with volcano
observatories and through IAVCEI-CCVG. Training of staff to maintain network instrumentation is
key to continued success of network.
(2) Tectonic Fluxes of Deep Earth Carbon
Chair Jay Ague; Co-Chair Olivier Beyssac
This nascent effort will seek to determine the flux of deep crustal and mantle carbon to the
atmosphere from areas of active continental extension and mountain building. This important effort
is still in its organizational stages, and detailed research plans are being determined from the
outcomes of a community workshop on the topic held in conjunction with the 2013 Fall AGU
Meeting. The Tectonics Fluxes team is led by Jay Ague (Yale, US) and Olivier Beyssac (IMPMC,
Paris, France). The initiative is tentatively structured to center on three areas: (1) metamorphic
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processes (field, modeling and experimental studies); (2) erosional processes (rivers, orogens, what
carbon is produced, what is consumed); (3) extensional areas, rifted areas and sedimentary basins.
The mobility of carbon-bearing fluids and solids during tectonic metamorphism is an important
consideration in estimating non-volcanic fluxes of carbon-bearing species such as CO2 and CH4
from the lithosphere into the atmosphere and hydrosphere. This metamorphism can take place both
during continental collision and during continental extension (rifting). Evidence of the transfer of
carbon-bearing species from one rock formation to another, across lithologic boundaries, raises a
question: “How conservative are these transfers?” Reduced carbon in the form of crystalline
graphite or as less well ordered carbonaceous material is ubiquitous in metasedimentary rocks.
Because of its ubiquity and prevalent schistose occurrence, imitating the texture of sheet silicates,
the mobility of graphite is rarely considered as a common metamorphic process.
The flux of carbon from subducted slabs to the mantle wedge, from the mantle wedge into the
overlying lower crust, and from the lower crust to the upper crust remain as fundamental problems
in the deep carbon cycle. The conventional wisdom based on simple devolatilization reactions
involving C-H-O fluids has long held that most carbon is retained in the subducted slab beyond
subarc depths, being cycled deep into the mantle. That which does get released was thought to be
mostly restricted to the forearc. Although the C-H-O fluid picture has dominated the community’s
thinking for over a decade, there have been surprisingly few studies that actually examine subducted
rocks to determine carbonate and reduced carbon reaction histories.
This group will hold a
workshop (funded separately) in Corsica in 2015 that will seek to establish further priorities for
team research efforts in 2016.
Together, these efforts will make progress toward RF Decadal Goals 2, 3, 4 and 6, and will
address the topics of Earth’s Carbon Budget, Abiogenic Carbon, Deep Carbon and Deep Time,
Building the DCO Network, and Modeling and Visualization that were identified and highlighted in
the DCO Mid-Term Report.
(3) Diamonds and Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon (DMGC)
Chair Graham Pearson; Co-Chair Sonia Aulbach
Natural diamonds are direct samples of carbon from Earth’s mantle and directly record the deep
carbon cycle back through geologic time, and they enclose the deepest mineral samples that we
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have (and will ever have). This program will foster the continuation of a research consortium
(DMGC) that has established a new international infrastructure for diamond research to advance
studies of natural diamonds, their mineral and fluid inclusions, and experiments on diamondforming fluids/melts for the understanding of carbon mobility in Earth’s mantle.
Although rare, diamonds outnumber other known mantle carbon phases (e.g. carbides; Hazen et
al., 2013a) by many orders of magnitude. Their internal complexity records chemical events that
have led to their formation and evolution. In addition, natural diamonds contain inclusions of many
types of mantle minerals, whose composition reflects the depth and temperature of their trapping,
and whose ages are used to date the host diamond. The pressures of diamond inclusions
demonstrate that some diamonds come from as deep as ~800 kilometers; the ages of diamond
inclusions range from geologically young (e.g., 100 million years) to ~4 billion years, nearly as old
as the oldest rocks on Earth’s surface.
Despite their scientific importance, the research community has no reliably accessible supply of
diamonds from mines, due to changes in the economics of diamond mining companies and other
factors. Restriction in samples available for research has contributed to a fragmented and
uncoordinated community of researchers interested in diamonds for mantle dynamics, but these
scientists could make large advances in deep carbon cycle discovery if encouraged to organize and
collaborate. The DMGC effort will directly support the DCO Decadal Goals 2, 5 and 6. In
additional to novel cross-disciplinary research collaborations, DMGC efforts include both virtual
and actual registered sample collections (over 400 stones) and an EarthChem database of diamond
and inclusion geochemistry.
Existing DMGC Research and Initiatives. Eight current projects and four other initiatives make
up the current DMGC effort. These involve directly the work of 51 research scientists from 9
countries, including 7 postdocs and 12 graduate students. An additional group of 19 scientists are
intellectual partners in this research. The main DMGC activities and initiatives are:
• Carbon & Nitrogen Cycling in Earth’s Transition Zone Using Super-Deep Diamond
• The origin of ferropericlase included in diamonds: shallow or deep mantle origin?
• Geothermometers and the kinetics of defect reactions
• Development of diamond oxygen-isotope geochemistry
• Diamonds at the Nanoscale - The initial growth stage
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• The nature of diamond forming liquids in the mantle and direct estimates of deep mantle
stresses from diamond plasticity
• Unusual carbon sources/pathways in the mantle from lithospheric and ultradeep
diamonds
• Volatiles in shallow Earth using mantle xenoliths and experimental petrology
• DMGC Workshops
• Diamond Data Base (DiamondDB)
• Diamond Acquisition
• International Diamond School
These existing DMGC research activities and initiatives will be supported by holding two
workshops (Fall AGU San Francisco 2015, $20K and Edmonton Alberta 2016, $20K) for the
reporting of research findings, by setting up a DMGC travel fund ($25K) that will allow members to
make research and analytical visits to each other and by establishing a fund for new diamond
purchases ($10K) that will permit additions to the DMGC research diamond collection (see Table
1). During the previous DMGC grant, we leveraged in-kind support and actual new funds in a 10:1
ratio of leveraged support:DCO support. We will continue to seek addition support at this level.
The established research themes identified above will be continuing and we will be looking to
establish 3 major new initiatives.
Major new initiative 1: - Deep Mantle Carbon Through Time from Diamonds (DMCTTD). There
exist now a substantial number of diamonds that have been dated by the Sm-Nd in silicate and ReOs in sulfide methods (perhaps >4000). Chips, breaks, and offcuts from the host diamonds exist
within the sample suites of Aulbach, Cartigny, Harris, Pearson, Richardson and Shirey. All are
either DMGC Project Leaders or Project Partners. We propose to analyze these diamond pieces for
their C and N isotopic compositions by SIMS and conventional stable isotopic mass spectrometry.
The primary goals will be to see if deep-seated carbon-bearing fluids have evolved in the mantle
with time and to identify the sources of these fluids focussing on the relative contributions of
primordial versus recycled carbon. We will seek to provide experimental and theoretical constraints
with which to evaluate the veracity of the record in diamonds. The critical baseline data for this aim
can only be supplied reliably through diamond analysis. The data set does not currently exist nor
can it be obtained from the literature with enough accuracy to understand the geologic processes.
16
This data is of paramount importance for geobiologists and others geoscientists wishing to constrain
when and how life originated on Earth. The final product will be an unparalleled, one-of-a-kind
reference data set presented in a landmark paper that will be co-authored by the leading workers in
the field. We plan this to be a full DMGC wide effort involving all Project Leaders and key Project
Partners with all involved in authorship of journal publications. For this task we request support
($80K) for a postdoctoral fellow based either at the University of Alberta or at the Carnegie
Institution and support for SIMS analyses ($10K). We will leverage additional funds to complete
this expensive analytical work as we have in the previous DMGC grant (see above).
Major Output: - A model for the isotopic composition and carbon speciation of mantle carbon
since the mid-Archean to the Mesozoic, constrained by theoretical models and experiments.
Major new initiative 2: Characterization and initial analysis of the DMGC superdeep diamond
collection. We now have a significant superdeep diamond collection (>400 stones) that needs
evaluation. Undoubtedly, there are some diamonds in this collection that contain some of the most
important, deepest mantle minerals ever found. But at the moment they are buried within hazy
diamonds with irregular surface morphologies and it is not known which diamonds contain the best
inclusions for study. We need to systematically examine all diamonds microscopically and
spectroscopically, before, polishing windows on the most promising diamonds and doing detailed
in-situ characterization (X-ray, FTIR, and confocal Raman spectroscopy). This to be a full DMGC
wide effort involving all Project Leaders and key Project Partners and thus we expect all involved in
authorship of journal publications. We request support ($25K) for polishing, X-ray, FTIR, and
Raman spectroscopy.
Major Output: - An improved model for the volatile (C-N-OH) composition of the transition
zone and upper-most lower mantle derived from real samples. A definitive model for the C and N
isotopic composition of the transition zone and lower mantle and an improved constraint on the
Earth’s primordial C and N isotope composition.
Major Initiative number 3: New DMGC researchers: To diversify our group and increase
scientific breadth, to envelope early-career diamond researchers, we propose to introduce at least 4
new members to our consortium, all of whom are female scientists. The likely new participant are:
Prof Dorrit Jacob (Macquarie University), Dr Sonja Aulbach (Geothe University, Frankfurt), Dr
Emilie Thomassot (CRPG, Nancy), Dr Karen Smit (Gemological Institute of America).
17
The combined efforts of the researchers in the DMGC effort will contribute toward progress on
RF Decadal Goals 2, 3, 5 and 6, and will address the topics of Earth’s Carbon Budget, Abiogenic
Carbon, Deep Carbon and Deep Time, Building the DCO Network, Developing Data
Infrastructure, and Modeling and Visualization that were identified and highlighted in the DCO
Mid-Term Report.
(4) Global Cycling of Deep Earth Carbon
Chair Erik Hauri; Co-Chair Elizabeth Cottrell
This effort will seek to build the first deep Earth circulation model to simulate and test the
distribution of carbon throughout Earth’s interior. Participants in this effort have been determined
partly based on involvement in a community workshop in 2014 to be organized by David Bercovici
(Yale University) and Adrian Lenardic (Rice University). The deep Earth carbon cycle lacks a basic
global circulation model informed by geochemical research and experiments—a model necessary to
describe the distribution of carbon with the vast depths of Earth inaccessible to sampling (even by
diamonds). A fundamental model of carbon partitioning and transport within volcanic systems is
also lacking, and is in many ways analogous to the deep Earth circulation model but on a more local
scale. Realistic carbon circulation models have begun at Yale (Bercovici), Rice (Lenardic), LamontDoherty Earth Observatory (Marc Spiegelman) and Woods Hole (Mark Behn) through RF
collaboration with the geophysical fluid dynamics community. This group is beginning to model the
movement of carbon within the Earth via the study the transport of magma and gas within
volcanoes, within ocean ridges and subduction zones, and within the deepest Earth via the motions
of the deep interior driven by the distribution of density variations within Earth and the interaction
of subducted tectonic plates with phase transitions in Earth and with Earth’s core.
Further
participation in this effort will be forthcoming as a result of the DCO Modeling and Visualization
workshop to be held at the Smithsonian Institution in the spring of 2015.
An important metric for successful geophysical fluid dynamic models is the degree to which
they can predict geologic observations. Several categories of such models match geophysical
observables, but these have not yet been exploited to inform our understanding of the distribution of
carbon within Earth’s interior. A key part of RF engagement with this community will be to propose
the testing of conceptual models of deep Earth carbon transport against the numerical output from
18
dynamical models that have been tuned to reproduce geophysical constraints (plate velocity, heat
flow, upper mantle temperature) and geochemical constraints (including composition of the upper
mantle, accumulation of radiogenic isotopes). In essence, we wish to determine whether these
conceptual ideas are expected outcomes from dynamical models with high degrees of physical
realism in terms of mantle rheology, thermodynamics of phase changes, plate velocities, convective
vigor and mixing, trace element composition, and composition of the continental crust. This effort
will directly support RF Decadal Goals 2, 3, 5 and 6, and will address the topics of Earth’s Carbon
Budget, Deep Carbon and Deep Time, Building the DCO Network, Developing Data Infrastructure,
and Modeling and Visualization that were identified and highlighted in the DCO Mid-Term Report.
(5) Administration of the Reservoirs & Fluxes Office
This proposal will also continue the activity of the RF Office to help organize meetings and
workshops, coordinate field efforts involving DCO researchers in far-flung areas of expertise,
support outreach and formal collaboration efforts to national volcano observatories and other
organizations, to assist with publication and integration of data into web-accessible geochemical
and thermodynamic databases, and to support fundraising activities multiplying the funding of the
Sloan Foundation. As has been characteristic of RF research from the beginning, the RF
Community will seek to attract participation of the best scientists wherever they work, and to train
dedicated young researchers—graduate students and postdoctoral fellows—who will form the next
generation of deep carbon scientists.
While the four initiatives described above have some
component of travel support included for early-career scientists, the RF Office will maintain a travel
budget reserved to assist students, postdocs and junior researchers to participate in DCO-sponsored
meetings, workshops and conferences – in particular early career scientists who may be new to the
DCO and not yet identified by the participants of this proposal. For example, the RF Office is
helping to sponsor the 2015 Gordon Conference on the Interior of the Earth, which has a theme of
"Surface Connections" and will feature new research on the structure and dynamics of Earth’s
interior and their influence on surface processes ranging from tectonics to volcanism to climate. The
RF Office will also help to sponsor international participants to attend a 2-day workshop on the
interaction of the deep and surficial carbon cycles, to be held at the University of California,
Berkeley in conjunction with the annual CIDER Workshop (beginning in early July 2015). The
19
CIDER program is very multidisciplinary and a dynamic learning environment for graduate
students and postdoctoral researchers, but because it is largely funded by NSF it has been
problematic for early-career scientists from outside the US to attend. This is where the RF Office
can help.
Additionally, we have reserved funds for a Reservoirs & Fluxes workshop that will be held in
2016 at a date and location to be announced.
Science Team Qualifications
Activity in the RF Community has grown sharply over the four years of its existence, particularly
as the DECADE and DMGC initiatives have begun. The DCO Science Network currently has 113
researchers registered who have identified with the Reservoirs & Fluxes Community. The
DECADE team consists of 23 researchers from 10 countries with each extensive experience in
volcanic gas emissions studies (up to 40 years) on volcanoes worldwide, including all countries that
operate major national volcano observatories. The group represents a combined 319 years of postPhD research in the deep Earth cycling of volatile elements, physics and chemistry of fluids, and the
evolution of volcanic systems, and represents a broad range of expertise in applied physics,
analytical geochemistry, remote sensing, high-temperature/pressure experimental petrology, and
boots-on-the-ground geology of active volcanic systems. This body of work is represented by over
1000 publications, with nearly 28,000 citations in the scientific literature and a combined H-index
of 80. It is the first time such a group of scientists has brought their collective energies to bear on
deep carbon cycle science in a coordinated effort. A major effort ongoing within DECADE is to
establish formal collaborations between the DCO and the national volcano observatories of the
United States, France, Italy, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, Central and South America, among
others.
The DMGC team consists of 28 researchers from 11 countries, experts in a wide variety of
aspects of diamond research and includes all major diamond-producing countries and
representatives from several diamond industry partners and professional organizations. The DMGC
team represents the sole connection of RF activities with industry. The initiative is creating a new
international infrastructure for diamond research to advance studies of natural diamonds and
experiments on diamond-forming fluids/melts for the understanding of carbon mobility in Earth’s
20
mantle. The DMGC team currently has 1,396 publications, with nearly 36,000 citations in the
scientific literature and a combined H-index of 83.
The RF Community envisions a major workshop in 2016 to bring together the DECADE and
DMGC researchers with those in Tectonic Fluxes and geodynamic modeling of deep-Earth carbon
transport, to begin to identify areas of collaboration, knowledge gaps and new strategies for closing
these gaps. From the modest budgets for each of these initiatives, funds remaining after the RF
workshop would available for further organization to stimulate research on the most important of
the topics identified at the workshop.
Research Output
In research publications, RF Community researchers have already contributed six chapters in the
DCO landmark Reviews in Mineralogy & Geochemistry volume Carbon in Earth published in
March 2013. The chapters (Manning et al., 2013; Marty et al., 2013; Ni & Keppler, 2013; Jones et
al., 2013; Shirey et al., 2013; and Dasgupta, 2013) demonstrate the breadth and yet continuity of the
research topics active within Reservoirs & Fluxes. All of the RF participants in this proposal will
produce high profile, major peer-reviewed journal articles in the scientific literature, as well as
presentations at international meetings such as American Geophysical Union, Goldschmidt
Conference, International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior
(IAVCEI), Geological Society of America, and others. We are confident of a continuing flow of
influential publications.
Exemplifying measurements, the DECADE initiative will continue efforts toward building a new
CO2 measurement capability onto existing volcano emissions networks that are currently
emphasizing sulfur (the NOVAC project), at the national volcano observatories, as well as reaching
out to link their efforts to the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program (GVP), various databases
of volcano locations (volcano layer on Google Earth), the GVP database of volcanic eruptions, and
the new and growing EarthChem database on volcano gas compositions and flux estimates.
Exemplifying sample collection, archiving, and access, the DMGC consortium is establishing a
new research reference collection of diamonds in collaboration with natural diamond industry
partners, a diamond database from the literature created on EarthChem, and a catalogue of existing
diamond holdings to be created on SESAR; all will be accessible through IEDA links through the
21
RF website. The diamond reference collection already contains over 400 stones, and the DMGC
group is actively seeking to expand this collection.
Further exemplifying data science, the nascent initiatives on tectonic carbon fluxes and deep
carbon cycle modeling will contribute to similarly identified community databases for data sharing
among DCO researchers and others. All efforts will be shared with the larger research community
via efforts of the DCO Data Science teams. Each research track will maintain a web page on the
DCO’s RF website as an additional avenue for dissemination of the research results, and data
provided by the laboratory, experimental and field studies will be entered into existing databases
used in Earth system science geochemistry and thermodynamics (PetDB, GEOROC, GERM,
xMELTS, SUPCRIT).
Exemplifying engagement, research results will be shared with media outlets via the DCO
Engagement team as intriguing results pass through peer review and publication. The field work of
the RF Community also offers exciting chances to share the process of science. Real-time
opportunities may arise for public engagement, as the Icelandic volcanic eruptions showed. On a
more deliberate time scale, results of the research, e.g., on carbon fluxes from mid-ocean ridges and
subduction zone volcanoes, could be used to inform exhibits such as those in the Smithsonian
Institution’s Museum of Natural History.
Exemplifying education and social capital, as a result of the research in this proposal, several
graduate student and postdoctoral positions will be created for training and mentoring the next
generation of researchers in deep carbon science. An enduring product of RF research will be
communities; DECADE and DMGC are being built to endure as distinct and independent scientific
community organizations after the DCO’s decade has run its course. Organizations such as these
will need to find a broader base of support, such as funding programs within national science
agencies, and may even attract modest streams of private support. We will not know in two years
whether this vision becomes reality, but the groundwork is being laid.
Budget Justification and Leveraging
We request a total of $1,250,000 over 2 years to help support each of the four initiatives and the
RF Office as described above. Most funds will support instrumentation and training and research
activities of graduate students and postdocs. The latter is consistent with the vision presented at the
22
initiation of the RF Community – the project PIs consider this aspect of the proposal as vital support
for building and growing a community of young researchers trained in the multidisciplinary and
highly collaborative science of the DCO. The administrative operations of the RF Office will be
important for engaging new research teams in the RF Community, for regular communication
between the members of the projects described above via teleconference and face-to-face meetings,
for facilitating networking among DCO researchers, graduate students and postdocs, and for
identifying promising new avenues for DCO research in the RF Community not even conceived yet.
Although no sources of research support currently exist to fund the scientific activities described
in this proposal, several new grants for allied research have already been realized or are pending.
Alessandro Aiuppa (DECADE) has recently begun an ERC-funded project called BRIDGEBridging the Gap Between Gas Emissions and Geophysical Observations at Active Volcanoes
(1.5M euros, 48 months). Mike Burton (DECADE) has also recently begun an ERC-funded project
called CO2VOLC – Quantifying the Global Volcanic CO2 Cycle (1.72M euros, 60 months).
Fabrizio Nestola (DMGC) has a project funded by the ERC titled Inclusions in Diamonds:
Messengers from the Deep Earth ($1.42M euros, 60 months), while Diana Roman, Terry Plank and
Erik Hauri have a newly-funded NSF project Collaborative Research: From the Slab to the
Surface: Origin, Storage, Ascent and Eruption of Volatile-Bearing Magmas ($300k, 36 months).
These four projects alone amount to just under $6M in research activity that is allied with the efforts
we propose here, and add to $1.2M of allied support provided by the DMGC group (in-kind support
as well as projects funded by national funding agencies in the US, UK and France), and nearly $9M
in allied research activities that accompanied the first Sloan RF support (2011-2012).
A long-term objective of the DECADE group over the next two years is to install a permanent
network for automated continuous CO2 flux quantification and survey on approximately 25
volcanoes worldwide. Volcanoes for continuous monitoring will be prioritized based on criteria
determined by the DECADE group through its governance structure. Central to this effort is
continued operation of the NOVAC network already measuring SO2 fluxes from 25 volcanoes and
its progressive complementing with stations to measure CO2/SO2 ratios and, hence, quantify CO2
fluxes. These installations will also be coordinated with locations identified as large SO2 emitters by
satellite monitoring. We plan installment of new instruments on 5 additional volcanoes in the 20152016 timeframe. The NOVAC network was funded by EU until 2010 and since then has operated
23
largely from contributions of local volcano observatories and dwindling funds from Chalmers
University (Bo Galle, PI). Part of the RF budget in Year 1 will be used to support key NOVAC
locations and to find additional partners to assume some of the costs of continued operation of
NOVAC, as well as installation of new MultiGAS stations. As the NOVAC network transitions to
other partners, the effort will not necessarily be wedded entirely to existing NOVAC technologies;
instruments can be replaced with better and/or less expensive instruments, the locations can be
changed, the number of measured volcanoes can be changed – it is all potentially flexible.
Funds in Years 1 and 2 will also be used for campaigns to measure CO2 flux and identify CO2
sources from volcanic regions and actively degassing volcanoes that currently remain poorly
covered or even unknown. These campaigns will include direct volcanic gas sampling and
laboratory analysis, ground-based measurements using portable MultiGAS, Open-Path FTIR
spectroscopy and new mass spectrometers, airborne measurements of gas plumes with novel tools
and development of new instruments (V-CAFÉ, laser-based isotopic systems, ERC project
CO2VOLC, etc), and collection of rock samples for melt inclusion studies at the same volcanoes.
The data will also provide ground-truth validation to ongoing and future efforts in detecting CO2
fluxes from satellite. The Year 2 budget for DECADE assumes a continued gradual transition of
NOVAC network operations to supporting organizations that are yet to be identified.
The Diamonds & Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon (DMGC) group will receive continuing
support to be used for workshops to gather researcher partners engaged in the study of diamonds
and their inclusions, and will support travel of DMGC members for research collaborations. This
group will also receive support for a postdoctoral researcher, in collaboration with the University of
Alberta, to begin studies of the new DMGC collection of over 400 inclusion-bearing diamonds from
the superdeep Juina, Brazil locale. Additional funds will be used to enable continued entry of new
and published data into the EarthCHem DiamondDB database, and procurement of new diamonds
from various distributed diamond mines to grow the DMGC diamond reference collection, to be
made available to the community for coordinated research activities. This will be a valuable
resource for those who have the laboratory capabilities for important diamond analytical
measurements, but simply lack a supply of located natural diamond specimens due to constriction of
supply.
Funds are also provided to support travel for RF Community scientists, particularly graduate
24
students, postdocs and early-career scientists to attend important DCO meetings such as the DCO
International Science Meeting in Munich (March 2015), the Modeling and Visualization Workshop
in Washington DC (May 2015), participation of international researchers in the DCO-CIDER
Workshop in Berkeley (July 2015), the Tectonic Fluxes Workshop in Corsica (September 2015),
and a to-be-planned RF Workshop in 2016.
Achieving Reservoirs & Fluxes Community Decadal Goals
Five Decadal Goals guide the RF scientific program (see page 2 above). This proposal
specifically addresses all of those goals, as outlined in the following Table.
__________________________________________________________________________
RF Activity
Goal 1
Goal 2
Goal 3
Goal 4
Goal 5 Goal 6
1. DECADE
X
X
X
X
2. Tectonic Fluxes
X
X
X
X
3. DMGC
X
X
X
X
4. Global Circulation
X
X
X
X
*Goals include (1) Volcano monitoring; (2) forms and distribution of carbon; (3) Carbon on the
seafloor; (4) net direction and magnitude of tectonic C fluxes; (5) origin of Earth’s carbon and
evolution of the carbon cycle through time; (6) global model of C cycle.
25
References
Black, B.A., Elkins-Tanton, L.T., Rowe, M.C. and Peate, I.U., Magnitude and consequences of
volatile release from the Siberian Traps, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 317, 363-373.
Burton MR, Sawyer GM, Granieri D (2013) Deep carbon emissions from volcanoes. Rev Mineral
Geochem 75, in press
Dasgupta R (2013) Ingassing, storage, and outgassing of terrestrial carbon through geologic time.
Rev Mineral Geochem 75, in press
Dasgupta, R. and Hirschmann, M.M., The deep carbon cycle and melting in the Earth’s interior,
Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 298, 1-13, 2010.
Hazen RM, Downs RT, Jones AP, Kah LC (2013a) Carbon mineralogy and crystal chemistry. Rev
Mineral Geochem 75, in press
Hazen, RM, Downs RT, Kah LC, Sverjensky DA (2013b) Carbon mineral evolution. Rev Mineral
Geochem 75, in press
Jones AP, Genge M, Carmody L (2013) Carbonate melts and carbonatites. Rev Mineral Geochem
75, in press
Manning CE, Shock EL, Svjerjensky DA (2013) The chemistry of carbon in aqueous fluids at
crustal and upper-mantle conditions: Experimental and theoretical constraints. Rev Mineral
Geochem 75, in press
Marty B, Alexander CMO’D, Raymond SN (2013) Primordial origins of Earth’s carbon. Rev
Mineral Geochem 75, in press
Ni HW, Keppler H (2013) Carbon in silicate melts. Rev Mineral Geochem 75, in press
Marty, B. and Tolstikhin, I., CO2 fluxes from mid-oceanic ridges, arcs and plumes, Chem. Geol.
145: 233-248, 1998.
Oganov A, Hemley, RJ, Hazen, RM, Jones, AP (2013) Deep carbon mineralogy: Theoretical and
experimental approaches. Rev Mineral Geochem 75, in press
Saal, A., E.H. Hauri, C.H. Langmuir and M. Perfit. Vapor undersaturation in primitive mid-ocean
ridge basalt and the volatile content of the Earth’s upper mantle, Nature 419, 451-455, 2002.
Sano, Y., Nakamura, Y., Wakita, H., Notsu, K. and Kobayashi, Y., 3He/4He ratio anomalies
associated with the 1984 western Nagano earthquake – possibly induced by a diapiric magma, J.
Geophys. Res. 91, 2291-2295, 1986.
Shirey SB, Cartigny P, Frost DJ, Keshav S, Nestola F, Nimis P, Pearson DG, Sobolev NV, Walter
MJ (2013) Diamonds and the geology of mantle carbon. Rev Mineral Geochem 75, in press
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Vergniolle, S. and Jaupart, C., Separated two-phase flow and basaltic eruptions, J. Geophys. Res.
91, 2156-2202, 1986.
Wood, B.J., Carbon in the core, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 117, 593-607.
Wood BJ, Li J, Shahar A (2013) Carbon in the core: Its influence on the properties of core and
mantle. Rev Mineral Geochem 75, in press
27
Appendix 1 – Acronyms and Abbreviations
AGU - American Geophysical Union
ANU - Australian National University
BOD - Board of Directors
CCVG - Commision on the Chemistry of Volcanic Gases
CIW - Carnegie Institution of Washington
DCO - Deep Carbon Observatory
DECADE - Deep Earth Carbon Degassing
DMGC - Diamonds & Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon
GEOROC - Geochemistry of Rocks of the Oceans and Continents
GERM - Geochemical Earth Reference Model
GfG - Geoinformatics for Geochemistry
GSA - Geological Society of America
GVP - Global Volcanism Program (Smithsonian Institution)
IAVCEI - International Association of Volcanology & Chemistry of the Earth's Interior
IEDA - Integrated Earth Data Applications
IGSN - International Geo-Sample Number
IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe Paris
IODP – International Ocean Drilling Program
MGDS - Marine Geoscience Data Systems
NOVAC - Network for Observation of Volcanic & Atmospheric Change
PetDB - Petrological Database
RF - Reservoirs & Fluxes Community
SAC - Science Advisory Committee (DCO)
SESAR - System for Earth Sample Registration
SSC - Science Steering Committee (DCO Communities)
SUPCRIT - thermodynamic model of gas-fluid-melt equilibrium
Tg - teragrams (1e12 grams)
UCLA - University of California, Los Angeles
URI - University of Rhode Island
USGS - United States Geological Survey
V-CAFÉ - Volcanic Carbon Atmospheric Flux Experiment
VDAP - Volcano Disaster Assistance Program
WOVO - World Organization of Volcano Observatories
xMELTS - thermodynamic model of melt-solid equilibrium
28
Appendix 2 – Reservoirs & Fluxes Management and Operations
Co-Chairs Erik Hauri and Marie Edmonds together oversee the scientific operations and
financial management of the Reservoirs & Fluxes (RF) Community of the DCO.
They
communicate on average weekly on RF affairs, participate in regular conference calls with the DCO
Secretariat and Executive Committee, and communicate in person with RF’s Science Steering
Committee and the DCO Science Advisory Committee twice annually. Hauri and Edmonds expect
to split duties in representing the RF Community and the DCO at scientific meetings in the US,
Europe and Asia for the purposes of better communicating to the scientific community the mission
of the DCO and the research directions of RF. Together they will communicate regularly, through
teleconferences and email, with members of the RF Science Steering Committee and RF liaisons to
the DCO’s Data Science team (Kerstin Lehnert, Columbia U.) and Engagement team (Elizabeth
Cottrell, Smithsonian); both Lehnert and Cottrell also serve as members of the RF Science Steering
Committee, which is active in reviewing scientific directions of RF in proposals to the Sloan
Foundation and provides suggestions for avenues of external funding.
The RF Community is proposing to move forward on four separate lines of research that are
represented by new organized initiatives (DECADE and DMGC), one initiative that is in the earliest
stages of organization (Tectonic Fluxes of Deep Carbon), and one initiative recommended to RF in
the last meeting of the DCO’s Science Advisory Committee (Global Circulation of Deep Earth
Carbon). The leadership of these four initiatives will report to the RF Community over the next two
years, will actively take part in overall RF decision making, and will contribute biographical,
organizational and scientific content to the new DCO website and the RF website being developed
by the Data Science and Engagement teams.
29
Appendix 3 – Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE) Governance
Acting interim officers of the Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE) initiative are Tobias
Fischer (Chair), Nicole Bobrowski (Co-Chair), Patrick Allard (Vice-Chair) and Erik Hauri
(Treasurer). Giovanni Chiodini, Bo Galle and Alessandro Aiuppa are serving as additional Board
of Directors (BOD) members. A diagram of a proposed DEACDE governance structure is shown
below.
At a meeting San Francisco on Dec. 5th 2012, the DECADE Board of Directors (BOD)
discussed DECADE structure, scientific directions, database efforts, public engagement and
research project priorities. The DECADE officers are conducting initial organizational work, and
discussions are underway to establish parameters for individual and organizational membership.
The interim BOD is cultivating communication with presidents/chairs of other relevant entities such
as IAVCEI, GVP, WOVO, USGS Volcano Hazards program (and international equivalents),
30
national Volcano Observatories, etc. The idea of the communication is to engage other entities in
DECADE activities, publicize these activities to the broader community and seek additional support
(funding, infrastructure, human resources, field work co-ordination, etc.) from these entities. In
February-March 2013, CCVG and current DECADE members will be informed of the governance
structure and encouraged to nominate other scientists for membership. Communication tools will
include Doodle polls, email, video conferencing, and eventually the internal DCO communication
tools developed by the Data Science and Engagement teams. At the July 2013 IAVCEI Meeting in
Kagoshima, Japan, all members will be invited to the DECADE workshop. At this meeting the first
formal BOD will be elected and begin process of constituting subcommittees and establishing
lateral linkages to other entities. The first round of project funding distribution will be made in
mid-2013.
31
Appendix 4 – Diamonds & Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon (DMGC) Governance
Steering Committee officers of the Diamonds & Mantle Geodynamics of Carbon (DMGC)
initiative are D. Graham Pearson (Chair), Sonia Aulbach (Co-Chair), Michael Walter (Vice-Chair),
Erik Hauri (Treasurer), Pierre Cartigny (Secreatary) and Steve Shirey (SC member). This
coordinating/steering committee was established at the Reservoirs & Fluxes workshop Dec. 5 th
2012 in San Francisco and a diagram of a proposed governance structure is shown below.
At the San Francisco meeting, the committee discussed the DMGC structure, emphasizing
simplicity of operation and minimization of bureaucracy. Most organizational work will be done by
the above-mentioned DMGC coordinating/steering committee consisting of a Chair, vice-Chair,
Treasurer and a Secretary. All project partner are part of the coordinating committee.
32
Appendix 5 – Reservoirs & Fluxes Data Science
The data science liaison for the Reservoirs & Fluxes Community is Kerstin Lehnert of
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University; she is Director of Integrated Earth
Data Applications (IEDA). IEDA is an open-access, community-based, NSF-funded facility that
provides data services for the Ocean, Earth, and Polar Sciences to support, sustain, and advance the
geosciences. IEDA data systems serve as primary community data collections for global
geochemistry and marine Geoscience research, supporting the preservation, discovery, retrieval, and
analysis of a wide range of observational field and analytical data types, enabling these data to be
discovered and reused by a diverse community now and in the future. IEDA is a partnership
between the Geoinformatics for Geochemistry (GfG) program and the Marine Geoscience Data
System (MGDS), whose systems include the geochemical databases PetDB and SedDB, the
geochemistry data network EarthChem, the Ridge2000 and GeoPRISMS Data Portals, the
Academic Seismic Portal field data collection, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Data System, the
Global Multi Resolution Topography synthesis, and the System for Earth Sample Registration
SESAR which is an internationally recognized system for unique identification of research samples
that is tied to database information and publications. IEDA is funded by the US National Science
Foundation through a Cooperative Agreement.
PetDB is perhaps the flagship database of the EarthChem quiver, it is a searchable
geochemical database of terrestrial rocks that currently contains 55,813 samples, 719,177 bulk rock
data, 707,410 mineral compositions, 472,356 volcanic glass compositions, data on radiogenic,
stable, noble gas and cosmogenic isotopes, etc - for a total of 1,944,702 individual data on samples
from 15,463 sampling locations. Resources such as PetDB and others are available not only to
Reservoirs & Fluxes researchers, but to the whole of the scientific community. These systems will
serve as vital linkages of fundamental data to the DCO’s own Data Science group as they seek to
33
build communication and research tools that will use this data in unique and novel ways, and in
particular to make possible new scientific discoveries from multi-disciplinary use of large data sets.
The RF Community and Lehnert are already beginning work on specific databases of particular
DCO interest that do not currently exist, namely geochemical databases for volcanic gas
compositions and fluxes, as well as diamonds and their inclusions. RF will also soon be working
with the Data Science group to link the EarthChem geochemical databases with the database of
volcanic eruptions maintained by the Global Volcanism Project (GVP) of the Smithsonian
Institution, and to assure efficient linkages of EarthChem databases with high-level DCO data
science tools. This should make possible – as one example – the ability to locate a volcano from
GVP’s volcano layer on Google Earth, view the history of known volcanic eruptions of this
volcano, and then access the geochemical data for rock and gas samples associated with the
volcano, and download all of this information for further data analysis.
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Appendix 6 – Reservoirs & Fluxes Public Engagement
The public engagement liaison for the Reservoirs & Fluxes Community is Elizabeth Cottrell
of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC; she is a research scientist in high-pressure hightemperature experimentation and is the Director of the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program
(GVP), housed in the Department of Mineral Sciences, part of the National Museum of Natural
History. The GVP is devoted to a better understanding of Earth's active volcanoes and their
eruptions during the last 10,000 years.
GVP builds systems and generates data to address
fundamental questions on the frequency, duration, likelihood and impact of volcanic eruptions
around the world.
The main focus of research activity in RF – volcanoes and diamonds – are geologic entities
that are of great interest to the pubic and easy to connect to the central scientific goals of the DCO.
We have already begun some initial conversations about the kinds of media (photos, videos, etc)
that will make for good website content, and are becoming more familiar with the tools that can be
used to produce this media. The DECADE volcano group in particular is a broad group that
engages in field campaigns to volcanoes around the world, from the poles to the equator, and as
demonstrated by the frequent volcano-related television specials that have been produced by
National Geographic, Discovery Channel, NOVA and others. The public has an identified interest
in volcanoes and volcanism, and RF will seek to leverage this interest to further inform the public
about how volcanoes are a surface expression of the Earth’s deep carbon cycle. By the same token,
diamonds are a widely recognized mineral that the public directly relates to when one thinks of
“deep carbon”, and in the same way as volcanoes, RF will seek to use the public interest in
diamonds to educate and inform on the importance that diamond holds in studying the deep carbon
cycle to great depth, and back through billions of years of geologic time.
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One area in which RF is very interested in collaborating with the DCO’s Engagement team
is in using the public’s interest in volcanoes and diamonds to seek resources for RF scientific
projects. Increased visibility of the scientific work happening within RF can potentially serve to
generate interest in funding or possibly even participation in RF and DCO scientific activities. We
think this could be an important avenue to explore within the next two years of RF activity.
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Appendix 7 – Instrument Uses and Needs within Reservoirs & Fluxes Community
The Reservoirs & Fluxes Community depends on instruments for a wide variety of its data
acquisition needs, both while in the field and in the laboratory.
In the realm of field-ready
instruments for volcanic measurements, the development of the V-CAFÉ instrument (Tobias
Fischer PI, U. New Mexico) was funded by the Sloan Foundation and has been extensively fieldtested in Hawaii (in collaboration with the Hawaii Volcano Observatory) where a continuous gas
plume is emanating from the crater of Kilauea volcano. Plans are underway to find a manufacturer
for the instrument, which is able to obtain measurements of gas composition as rapidly as once per
second. Similarly, a privately-funded effort at the Carnegie Institution is underway to develop a
new generation of inexpensive field-deployable platforms for simultaneous measurements of
volcanic gas chemistry and seismic signals (Bento Box). Part of this effort is also to develop a new
automated UV camera system for obtaining 2D images of SO2 emission from volcanic craters,
permitting real-time determinations of SO2 flux, and together with Bento Box, volcanic fluxes of
CO2, H2S, HF, HCl and HBr. Still another project is developing a laser-based field-deployable
system for measuring the carbon isotope composition of volcanic gas at rates that approach 1Hz.
Perhaps one of the greatest instrumental challenges facing the RF Community is the directly
measuring carbon output from volcanoes via remote sensing. In this respect, allied projects by
Clive Oppenheimer (Cambridge, UK) and Mike Burton (INGV, Italy) are working on developing
novel new instruments that use FTIR and Lidar to determine the carbon content of volcanic gas
plumes. The challenge will be to produce all of these instruments as sufficiently low cost that they
can be inexpensively deployed on a large number of target volcanoes, and for this we will need to
establish connections with key scientific instrument manufacturers.
A sandpit-style workshop
tentatively scheduled for summer of 2013 is one promising avenue for engaging instrument
manufacturers to produce instruments for DCO projects, but additional industry contacts are
desirable.
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In the laboratory, promising new mass spectrometers that are being designed for IPGP
(Paris, France) and UCLA hold great promise for obtaining precise measurements of rare isotopes
in volcanic gas samples that may lead to new breakthroughs in fingerprinting sources of magmatic
versus local carbon contributions to volcanic gas, while a new highly-precise method for measuring
isotopes of helium in air will be used to trace the sources and fluxes of volcanic gas in areas that are
subject to diffuse degassing. Although many other mature laboratory analysis methods are being
used to great advantage by the RF Community, perhaps the greatest laboratory need is in obtaining
samples; this is particularly true of diamonds, the supply of which has greatly dwindled for
researchers, and for melt inclusions which can be used to determine pre-eruptive contents of
magmatic volatiles.
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