Experimental and petrological constraints on local-scale interaction of biotite-amphibole gneiss with H_2O-CO_2-(K,Na) Cl fluids at middle-crustal conditions:Example from the Limpopo Complex,South Africa

Reaction textures and fluid inclusions in the -2.0 Ga pyroxene-bearing dehydration zones within the Sand River biotite-hornblende orthogneisses （Central Zone of the Limpopo Complex） suggest that the formation of these zones is a result of close interplay between dehydration process along ductile shear zones triggered by H2O-CO2-salt fluids at 750--800 ℃ and 5.5--6.2 kbar, partial melting, and later exsolution of residual brine and H2O-CO2 fluids during melt crystallization at 650--700 ℃. These processes caused local variations of water and alkali activity in the fluids, resulting in various mineral assemblages within the dehydration zone. The petrological observations are substantiated by experiments on the interaction of the Sand River gneiss with the H2O-CO2-（K, Na）Cl fluids at 750 and 800 ℃ and 5.5 kbar. It follows that the interaction of biotite-amphibole gneiss with H2O-CO2-（K, Na）CI fluids is accompanied by partial melting at 750--800 ℃. Orthopyroxene-bearing assemblages are characteristic for temperature 800 ℃ and are stable in equilibrium with fluids with low salt concentrations, while salt-rich fluids produce clinopyroxene-bearing assemblages. These observations are in good agreement with the petrological data on the dehydration zones within the Sand River olthogneisses.

Alkali control of high-grade metamorphism and granitization

We review petrologic observations of reaction textures from high-grade rocks that suggest the passage of fluids with variable alkali activities. Development of these reaction textures is accompanied by regular compositional variations in plagioclase, pyroxenes, biotite, amphibole and garnet. The textures are interpreted in terms of exchange and net-transfer reactions controlled by the K and Na activities in the fluids. On the regional scale, these reactions operate in granitized, charnockitized, syenitized etc. shear zones within high-grade complexes. Thermodynamic calculations in simple chemical systems show that changes in mineral assemblages, including the transition from the hydrous to the anhydrous ones, may occur at constant pressure and temperature due only to variations in the H2O and the alkali activities. A simple procedure for estimating the activity of the two major alkali oxides, K2O and Na2O, is imple- mented in the TWQ software. Examples of calculations are presented for well-documented dehydration zones from South Africa, southern India, and Sri Lanka. The calculations have revealed two end-member regimes of alkalis during specific metamorphic processes： rock buffered, which is characteristic for the precursor rocks containing two feldspars, and fluid-buffered for the precursor rocks without K-feldspar. The observed reaction textures and the results of thermodynamic modeling are compared with the results of available experimental studies on the interaction of the alkali chloride and carbonate-bearing fluids with metamorphic rocks at mid-crustal conditions. The experiments show the complex effect of alkali activities in the fluid phase on the mineral assemblages. Both thermodynamic calculations and experiments closely reproduce paragenetic relations theoretically predicted by D.S. Korzhinskii in the 1940s.