Early estimates based on wet chemistry and magnetite–ilmenite pairs indicated that mid‐ocean ridge basalts (MORBs) record fO2s similar to QFM (Carmichael & Ghiorso, 1986; Haggerty, 1976). However, upon reexamining data from the literature compiled by Haggerty (1976), we found only one sample with multiple pairs of magnetite and ilmenite in equilibrium at magmatic temperatures according to Bacon and Hirschmann (1988), and that sample (15.6m cooling unit from DSDP Leg34: site 319A) records QFM+0.16 (±0.1) at 1232 (±37)°C (Mazzullo & Bence, 1976). Subsequent wet chemical work found that MORBs record fO2s low enough to suggest graphite is a stable phase in the MORB source (i.e., ~QFM‐1, Christie et al., 1986), but more recent wet‐chemical work and Fe K‐edge XANES analyses have revised average MORB fO2 estimates back upwards to QFM (Bezos & Humler, 2005; Cottrell & Kelley, 2011; O’Neill et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018). Five recent studies determine Fe3+/∑Fe ratios spectroscopically by XANES to determine the fO2 of average MORB (Fig. 3.1, Fig. 3.2a) (Birner et al., 2018; Cottrell & Kelley, 2011; Le Voyer et al., 2015; O’Neill et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018). Determinations for 166 MORB glasses that use the calibration of Zhang et al. (2018) find a narrow distribution around QFM –0.17±0.15 (all uncertainty is 1 standard deviation [σ] unless otherwise noted). Determinations for 42 MORB using the calibration of Berry et al. (2018) by O’Neill et al. (2018) return a mean of QFM +0.19 ±0.36. It is notable that O’Neill et al. (2018)’s corresponding Fe3+/∑Fe ratios for average MORB are lower by ~0.04 than those from the global survey of Zhang et al. (2018), despite their equation to higher fO2. The difference stems from O’Neill et al. (2018)’s application of a new compositional parameterization of fO2, which we choose not to apply in this study (see Methods Appendix for a description and assessment of parameterizations). The important point for our purpose here is that, regardless of the value of the Fe3+/∑Fe ratio of natural MORB, the Fe‐XANES spectra of natural MORB glasses resemble the spectra of experimental MORB‐composition glasses equilibrated at fO2 similar to the QFM buffer (see Methods Appendix, Fig. S1), and there is general agreement among all recent spectroscopic studies that MORB glasses record QFM. The fO2s recorded by average MORBs (7.58 wt.% MgO, Gale et al., 2013b) will be maxima with respect to the fO2 of the mantle from which they derive, because Fe3+ is moderately incompatible during low‐pressure fractional crystallization and average MORBs are not primary melts of the mantle (Fe3+/∑Fe ratios increase by 0.03 as MgO falls from 10 to 5 wt.%; Cottrell & Kelley, 2011).
Figure 3.1 Locations of samples compiled in this study as a function of tectonic setting, lithology, and methodology. Symbol size scales linearly with the number of samples at a given locality.
Figure 3.2 Distribution of fO2 recorded by volcanics globally in different tectonic settings and by multiple methods of oxybarometry. We have recalculated the fO2 recorded by each sample based on the reported chemical analyses except for the separate light gray dataset in panel (a), which are the observations as reported by O’Neill et al. (2018). The O’Neill et al. (2018) dataset was collected using a different set of primary standards, as described in our methods appendix. Vertical, dashed lines reflect calculated average values of fO2. Note that volcanics in (e) include plume‐affected ridge segments, which cause them to record bimodal fO2; the fO2s inferred for primitive plume magmas are higher than the average and we represent each plume’s primitive magma fO2 as a filled orange circle (as reported by those authors). See Table 3.1 and