Advent of Continent: Evidence from Nishinoshima volcano and challenge of ultra-deep drilling into arc crust (ArcHole)

Abstract

Nishinoshima, one of the submarine volcanoes in the Ogasawara Arc, ~1,000 km south of Tokyo, Japan, suddenly erupted in November 2013, after 40 years of dormancy. The Nishinoshima volcano might represent the missing link between the mantle and the continental crust because (1) Nishinoshima, whose underlying crust is only 21 km thick, is one of the world’s closest volcanoes to the mantle, and (2) the lavas have been andesites and were similar in composition to the continental crust.