A CAREER ON LARGE IGNEOUS PROVINCES: INSPIRED BY PROF. JELLE DE BOER

Prof. Jelle de Boer supervised my Bachelor’s thesis in 1978 at Wesleyan University, and was a mentor during my time at Wesleyan and since. One of the many foci of Jelle’s research was on the 201 Ma CAMP event, and I had the honour to publish with him on aspects of the ENA portion of CAMP. Inspired by this research and through his sage advice Jelle helped launched me to a lifelong interest in diabase dyke swarms and their broader magmatic context of Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs).

In this presentation I summarize the dramatic progress since the 70s’ in our understanding of LIPs in general and the CAMP event in particular. LIPs are huge (>100,000 cu. km), mainly mafic (-ultramafic) magmatic events of intraplate affinity occurring in both continental and oceanic settings, and typically of short duration (<5 Myr), but some consist of multiple short pulses spanning some 10s of myr. LIPs consist of volcanic packages (flood basalts) and a plumbing system of dyke swarms (linear, radiating, and circumferential types), sill complexes, mafic-ultramafic intrusions, and crustal magmatic underplates. Silicic LIPs, carbonatites and kimberlites can be associated. LIPs are associated with breakup or attempted breakup of continents, are relevant to resource exploration (ore deposits, hydrocarbons and aquifers), are linked with dramatic climate change including mass extinction events, and have analogues on Mars, Venus, the Moon and Mercury.