Sulphur cycling in subduction zones

Subduction of altered oceanic lithosphere plays a key role in many arc related processes and global chemical cycles, and links the surficial and internal chemical reservoirs. The altered oceanic crust and serpentinized mantle thereby control the transport of considerable amounts of water, oxidized and reduced sulfur as well as various other species into the deep mantle affecting the redox state of Earth’s interior and arc-related magmatism. In our group, we focus on the cycling of sulfur within the lithospheric slab in high-pressure metamorphic rocks. We combine mineralogical and petrological investigations (EMP, SEM incl. mineralogic software) with in situ techniques (SIMS, Laserablation) and bulk rock geochemistry to determine how sulfur is transferred within the slab and into the mantle wedge, how these processes affect large-scale arc-related processes, and how they impact the sulfur budget of Earth’s upper mantle and potentially its redox state.