This project supports collaborative research between a U.S. team including Dr. Martin Flower, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Philip Janney, Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois and Dr. Elisabeth Widom, Department of Geology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and a Turkish team including Dr. Osman Parlak, Department of Geology, Cukuruva University, Adana, Turkey and Dr. Hakan Coban, Department of Geology, Suleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey. They plan to conduct a Preliminary Study of Mantle Processes during African-Anatolian Convergence. As thermal and compositional probes of Earth's interior, magmatic rocks offer "windows" for studying interactions between the convecting upper mantle and lithospheric plates. The project involves fieldwork, research-planning visits, and preliminary data acquisition in preparation for a long-term program of geochemical, isotopic, and 40Ar/39age-dating studies in southern Turkey. The research is expected to provide a record of the thermal and contamination history of asthenospheric magma sources based on various samples. The ophiolites represent products of pre-collision subduction nucleation and back-arc opening events. In contrast, ultrapotassic magmas appear to reflect asthenospheric perturbations related to post-collision tearing and breakoff of previously subducting 'slabs'. Preliminary data for geochemically- characterized samples will greatly enhance our future sampling and analytical strategies. The completed database pre- and post-collision mantle melting products will allow the testing of actualistic models developed at currently active convergent plate boundaries. The project will benefit from and contribute to the 'TETHYS' GIS database, a project funded to Drs. Martin Flower (UIC), Eric Sandvol (University of Missouri), Shuhab Khan (University of Houston), and Mohamed Sultan (SUNY- Buffalo), building a permanent 'GEON' www.geongrid.org/about.html node at the University of Illinois Supercomputing Center. Initiated with support from UNESCO and IUGS, this project is integrating geochemical, geophysical, and geochronologic data for the Tethyan tectonic belt with remote sensed imagery and digital geologic information.
Scope and broader impact: Undergraduate and graduate students that are working in the collaborating laboratories in the U.S. and Turkey can be involved in this research, gaining experience in analytical work, with the opportunity to contribute to results that are presented at national and international meetings. The PIs will encourage high-caliber Turkish and US graduate student participation in our proposed research and will report preliminary results at the "International Symposium on Geodynamics and Active Tectonics of the Eastern Mediterranean region" (to be held in May 2005 at the Kadir Has University, Istanbul) and other major meetings. Drs. Coban and Parlak are submitting a parallel proposal to TUBITAK to support international travel for Turkish co-PIs, and field and research costs in Turkey. This project is being funded jointly by OISE and the Division of Earth Sciences.
