Petrography, Mineralogy, and Geochemistry of Basalts

Dear Colleagues,

The basalt is the most abundant eruptive rocks on the surfaces of inner solar system planetary bodies. The basaltic rocks occurring on the surface of our planet Earth are perhaps one of the most voluminous and best-studied rocks in our inner solar system. The upcoming knowledge of modern research on these basaltic rocks could be extended to evaluate the evolution of planetary basaltic crusts. Although terrestrial basaltic rocks, occurring both on the modern ocean floor and continents, have been studied extensively using petrographic, mineral- and whole-rock geochemical and isotopic techniques and approaches of experimental petrology, many of the fundamental questions remain unresolved—for example, the origin of continental flood basalts (CFBs), the debatable mantle plume hypothesis and its possible role in the basalt petrogenesis, contamination of upper mantle with components of continental crust during the Gondwana break-up and its impact on geochemistry of oceanic basalts. If the modern plate tectonic-like setting was absent in the Archaean, what would be the model for explaining the origin of terrestrial Archaean basalts? Etc.

The petrochemical information on extraterrestrial basalts comes from studies on returned and achondrite samples mainly from the moon, Mars, and parent body of HED meteorites Vesta. The major enigma remains on the origin of high Ti basalts on the moon, the role of the KREEP component in lunar basalt petrogenesis, serial magmatism to explain the petrologic diversity in the lunar crust, the nature of young volcanism on the moon, ancient basaltic crust and geological evolution of Mars, understanding enrichment and depletion of Martian mantle through crust, etc. It is also an important issue to explore why the terrestrial subduction-zone-related basalts (i.e., high-Al₂O₃ basalts) are not abundant in the achondritic meteorite population. To get the most updated answers to some of these questions, the journal Minerals has planned to publish a Special Issue on “Terrestrial and Planetary Basaltic Rocks”, which includes the following topics: a) terrestrial MORB and its planetary significance, b) terrestrial subduction zone basalts, c) origin of extraterrestrial basalts using suitable terrestrial analogy, and d) mantle plume and its impact on basalt petrogenesis.

Dr. Saumitra Misra
Dr. Dwijesh Ray
Prof. Zhaochong Zhang
Guest Editors

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• MORB
• subduction zone basalts
• continental flood basalt
• lunar and Martian basalts
• basaltic achondrite
• mantle plume and basalt petrogenesis