The Late-Cenozoic Baikal Rift lies astride a suture between the Archean Siberian Craton and a southerly belt of younger accreted terranes. Basic magmas ranging from hypersthene-normative basalts to strongly nepheline-normative basanites have erupted across the southern end of the Baikal Rift since the Ogliocene, carrying fragments of the underlying mantle to the surface. This is a program of geochemical and petrologic research aimed at evaluating temporal and spatial variations in these mafic magmas and their mantle xenoliths. It will integrate isotopic, whole- rock major and trace element, and mineral chemistry data from basalts and xenoliths collected along a 550-km-long transect across the southern Baikal Rift. The transect extends from Proterozoic-Paleozoic lithosphere in the southeast across the suture onto the Archean craton in the northwest. This study will constitute one of the first of its kind from northern central Asia.
