The concept of mantle plumes, originally suggested by Morgan (1971), is widely but not unequivocally accepted as the cause for hotspot volcanism. Plumes are thought of as deep-rooted, approximately cylindrical regions of hot rising mantle rock with a typical diameter of 100-200 km. Pressure-release melting near the b- tom of the lithosphere produces magmas that rise to the surface and lead, when the plate moves relative to the plume, to a chain of volcanic edifices whose age p- gresses with increasing distance from the plume. For a long time, the evidence for mantle plumes has been largely...
The concept of mantle plumes, originally suggested by Morgan (1971), is widely but not unequivocally accepted as the cause for hotspot volcanism. Plum...