Dr. Vic Camp received his Phd at Washington State University. He Worked for the USGS, followed by 10 years overseas as an Assistant Professor in West Africa (University of Ibadan) and as a field geologist in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Became an Adjunct Professor at SDSU in 1988, and a full-time lecturer at SDSU in 1993. Vic's research interests have largely centered around the tectonomagmatic evolution of continental volcanic provinces. These include ocean closure generating a Mesozoic continental suture zone in the Neo-Tethyan belt of eastern Iran, terrane accretion in the early Proterozoic mobile belts of the Arabian Shield, mantle upwelling in the Cenozoic harrat volcanic province of western Saudi Arabia, and most recently, plume emplacement in the Columbia River Basalt province and the northern Basin and Range.
Abstract
Many workers attribute the great volume and chemical diversity of continental flood basalts to the rapid rise and melting of deep-seated mantle plumes, whereas others suggest that a plume is not necessary, and prefer a model of rapid melting associated with the delamination of mantle and lower crust. These competing models, however, are not mutually exclusive. Here, I will describe the Columbia River flood basalts as a case study, demonstrating that the tectonic history and chemical progression of the lava sequence are consistent with plume-induced delamination of thin Phanerozoic lithosphere juxtaposed against a thick Precambrian cratonic boundary. Such a model may provide a new, realistic mechanism for generating the chemical diversity and high magma supply rates of continental flood basalts in similar tectonic settings.
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