LITHO-FLUCHS: A toolbox for constraining LITHOspheric-to-grainscale controls on FLUid-roCk interactions in peridotite-hosted Hydrothermal Systems

The quantification of fluids, heat, and chemical elements, which cycle throughout our planet is essential to our understanding of Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and deep interior, and directly impacts global-scale modelling of climate change, ocean chemistry, plate tectonics, and natural resource distribution. Peridotite-hosted seafloor hydrothermal systems (PHHSs; peridotite: mantle rock-type), located in the rocky subsurface beneath our oceans, constitute a fundamental component of this planetary plumbing system. Within these PHHSs, circulating seawater and magmatic fluids react with the surrounding rock, resulting in chemical exchanges including hydrogen-production, carbon-capture, and seafloor metal-sulphide deposits. PHHSs are therefore important, not only for their contribution to ocean chemistry and global element cycles, but also for their relevance to our understanding of green-energy resources and geo-engineering solutions needed for the Energy Transition (H2-synthesis, CO2-capture, critical metals).
Despite the recognised importance of PHHSs, knowledge-gaps concerning the processes that control PHHSs at a local-scale prevent us from robustly quantifying the geochemical, environmental, and economic impacts of PHHSs at a global-scale. Specifically, how local-scale controls of deformation, magmatism, and fluid-rock reactions dictate fluid properties (e.g., fluid-source, pH, temperature) in PHHSs remains a key challenge. LITHO-FLUCHS will address this challenge with a first-of-its-kind combination of new, state-of-the-art analytical and computational techniques that will constrain the missing local-scale controls of PHHSs, as the crucial step to quantifying their global-scale impacts. This is possible only now thanks to new samples, new techniques, and new modelling capabilities acquired and developed by our team of leading international researchers. Hosted at the University of Plymouth and University of Leeds, with supporting partners in the UK, Italy, and...