The age of the subducting Nazca Plate off Chile increases northwards from 0 Ma at the Chile Triple Junction (46°S) to 37 Ma at the latitude of Valparaíso (32°S). Age-related variations in the thermal state of the subducting plate impact on (a) the water influx to the subduction zone, as well as on (b) the volumes of water that are released under the continental forearc or, alternatively, carried beyond the arc. Southern Central Chile is an ideal setting to study this effect, because other factors for the subduction zone water budget appear constant. We determine the water influx by calculating the crustal water uptake and by modeling the upper mantle serpentinization at the outer rise of the Chile Trench. The water release under forearc and arc is determined by coupling FEM thermal models of the subducting plate with stability fields of water-releasing mineral reactions for upper and lower crust and hydrated mantle. Results show that both the influx of water stored in, and the outflux of water released from upper crust, lower crust and mantle vary drastically over segment boundaries. In particular, the oldest and coldest segments carry roughly twice as much water into the subduction zone as the youngest and hottest segments, but their release flux to the forearc is only about one fourth of the latter. This high variability over a subduction zone of < 1500 km length shows that it is insufficient to consider subduction zones as uniform entities in global estimates of subduction zone fluxes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Phase diagrams of (a) the upper crust, (b) the lower crust and (c) the upper mantle based on averaged compositions of the oceanic crust and mantle taken from Staudigel et al. (1996) and Kerrick and Connolly, 1998 and calculated with Perple_X (Connolly, 2009). Input data and calculations are the same as for Figures 5 and 6 of the main text. Stability fields have partly been simplified and field boundaries have been interpolated. Mineral abbreviations are as given in Table S1.

Supplement to: Völker, David; Stipp, Michael (2015): Water input and water release from the subducting Nazca Plate along southern Central Chile (33°S-46°S). Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 16(6), 1825-1847