Oxygen isotope studies of potassic volcanic rocks of the Roman Province, Central Italy

Abstract

The ¹⁸O/¹⁶O ratios of rocks and coexisting minerals were measured for 93 samples of leucite-bearing lavas, pyroclastics, and related volcanic rocks from the Quaternary Roman Co-Magmatic Province, Italy. The δ¹⁸O values ​​were found to generally increase northward in the sequence: Ischia (5.8 to 7.0); Somma-Vesuvius and Phlegrean Fields (7.3 to 8.3); Alban Hills (7.3 to 8.7); M. Sabatini (7.3 to 9.7); Vico Volcano (7.4 to 10.2); and M. Vulsini (8.1 to 11.7). The northward increase in δ¹⁸O parallels a similar increase in ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, and these data indicate that the Roman magmas have interacted strongly with high-¹⁸O continental crust. A marked increase in δ¹⁸O occurs just north of Rome where the Roman Province begins to overlap the calc-alkaline, oversaturated Tuscan Magmatic Province. Therefore, some of the observed ¹⁸O/¹⁶O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enrichments in the Roman magmas may have been facilitated by direct mixing with the high-¹⁸O Tuscan magmas or because the high-¹⁸O country rocks underwent widespread heating during a couple of million years of Tuscan igneous activity. Although many of the Roman magmas underwent fractional crystallization without appreciable change in δ¹⁸O, contamination has produced a correlation between δ¹⁸O and SiO₂ content at several of the volcanic centers; thus the trachytes are typically higher in ¹⁸O than the undersaturated rocks. The major features of the oxygen isotope data can be explained in terms of a simple two-component mixing model in which one end-member was a primary, strongly undersaturated magma derived from the upper mantle, with δ¹⁸O ≈ + 6, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ≈ 0.704 to 0.705, and SiO₂ < 44wt.%. However, none of the analyzed samples have these values, as they have all been contaminated to some extent. The closest approach is found in some of the leucitepyroxenite ejecta from the Alban Hills. The second end-member, derived from the continental crust, had a variable composition with δ¹⁸O ≈ +12 to +20, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ≧ 0.712 to 0.720, and SiO₂ ≧ 65wt.%, And it mixed in much greater proportions in the volcanoes north of Rome than in those of the Alban Hills or the Naples area. The widespread interactions between the Roman magmas and the continental crust are probably due to (1) the fact that such low-SiO₂ magmas always have a very strong tendency to interact with quartz-bearing rocks of the continental crust, and (2) in Italy, these magmas were emplaced into a tectonically very active area containing poorly consolidated sedimentary rocks, and in the northern part of the belt there had been a prior history of extensive calc-alkaline igneous activity.