Jessica Warren

Professor, Earth Science | University of Delaware

Newark, DE, UNITED STATES

Dr. Warren's research focuses on plate tectonics and mantle dynamics.

Media

Publications Photos Videos Documents Audio/Podcasts

Publications:

Documents:

Photos:

Videos:

Audio/Podcasts:

Areas of Expertise (4)

Plate Tectonics

Rheology

Mantle Geochemistry

Peridotites

Media Appearances (6)

Record-breaking amount of Earth’s mantle drilled out of ocean floor

Freethink online

2023-06-10

“Getting down to this really fresh stuff has been a dream for decades and decades,” Jessica Warren, a mantle geochemist at the University of Delaware, who wasn’t involved in the JOIDES Resolution expedition, told Science. “We’re finally going to see the Wizard of Oz.”

For the first time ever, scientists drill into the Earth’s rocky mantle

Interesting Engineering online

2023-06-08

“Think of the crust in the way that you have a beautifully iced cake, but what you want is the cake, not the icing,” said Jessica Warren, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Delaware who has also been monitoring the project’s progress remotely.

Undersea Rocks Yield Earthquake Clues | UDaily

University of Delaware online

2021-08-05

Jessica Warren, associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Delaware, is exploring the middle of the ocean where earthquakes with a magnitude 6 on the Richter scale routinely occur, and what she is finding may help scientists predict earthquakes on land.

Ocean geology | UDaily

University of Delaware online

2020-02-19

UD’s Jessica Warren and her lab group collect rocks and place seismometers on the ocean floor

Ocean rocks! | UDaily

University of Delaware online

2018-09-14

UD’s Jessica Warren brings ocean rocks, shrunken objects to UD’s Coast Day

Measuring a crucial mineral in the mantle

EurekAlert! online

2017-09-13

University of Delaware professor Jessica Warren and colleagues from Stanford University, Oxford University and University of Pennsylvania, reported new data that material size-effects matter in plate tectonics.

Articles (13)

Deep, hot, ancient melting recorded by ultralow oxygen fugacity in peridotites

Nature

2024 "Previously, geologists proposed that changes in Earth’s oxygen might explain the shift. Perhaps some significant influx of oxygen sometime in Earth’s history altered the chemistry of the rocks and led to greater oxidation...[In a new paper in] Nature, new clues suggest that the oxidation change is a sign that Earth’s mantle rocks were melted in extreme heat and then persisted through billions of years." -- The Smithsonian

Effects of stress‐driven melt segregation on melt orientation, melt connectivity and anisotropic permeability

Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

2024 Stress‐driven melt segregation may have important geochemical and geophysical effects but remains a poorly understood process. Few constraints exist on the permeability and distribution of melt in deformed partially molten rocks. Here, we characterize the 3D melt network and resulting permeability of an experimentally deformed partially molten rock containing several melt‐rich bands based on an X‐ray microtomography data set. Melt fractions range from 0.08 to 0.28 in the ∼20‐μm‐thick melt‐rich bands, and from 0.02 to 0.07 in the intervening ∼30‐μm‐thick regions.

The effect of intracrystalline water on the mechanical properties of olivine at room temperature

Geophysical Research Letters

2024 The effect of small concentrations of intracrystalline water on the strength of olivine is significant at asthenospheric temperatures but is poorly constrained at lower temperatures applicable to the shallow lithosphere. We examined the effect of water on the yield stress of olivine during low‐temperature plasticity using room‐temperature Berkovich nanoindentation. The presence of water in olivine (1,600 ppm H/Si) does not affect hardness or yield stress relative to dry olivine (≤40 ppm H/Si) outside of uncertainty but may slightly reduce Young’s modulus. Differences between water‐bearing and dry crystals in similar orientations were minor compared to differences between dry crystals in different orientations.

Trace elements in abyssal peridotite olivine record melting, thermal evolution, and melt refertilization in the oceanic upper mantle

Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology

2023 Trace element concentrations in abyssal peridotite olivine provide insights into the formation and evolution of the oceanic lithosphere. We present olivine trace element compositions (Al, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Zn, Y, Yb) from abyssal peridotites to investigate partial melting, melt–rock interaction, and subsolidus cooling at mid-ocean ridges and intra-oceanic forearcs. We targeted 44 peridotites from fast (Hess Deep, East Pacific Rise) and ultraslow (Gakkel and Southwest Indian Ridges) spreading ridges and the Tonga trench, including 5 peridotites that contain melt veins.

Ductile deformation of the lithospheric mantle

Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences

2023 The strength of lithospheric plates is a central component of plate tectonics, governed by brittle processes in the shallow portion of the plate and ductile behavior in the deeper portion. We review experimental constraints on ductile deformation of olivine, the main mineral in the upper mantle and thus the lithosphere. Olivine deforms by four major mechanisms: low-temperature plasticity, dislocation creep, dislocation-accommodated grain-boundary sliding (GBS), and diffusion-accommodated grain-boundary sliding (diffusion creep).

Oceanic transform fault seismicity and slip mode influenced by seawater infiltration

Nature Geoscience

2021 Here we present a model for the mechanical structure of oceanic transform faults based on fault thermal structure and the impacts of hydration and metamorphic reactions on mantle rheology.

The potential for aqueous fluid-rock and silicate melt-rock interactions to re-equilibrate hydrogen in peridotite nominally anhydrous minerals

American Mineralogist

2021 Hydrogen is a rapidly diffusing monovalent cation in nominally anhydrous minerals (NAMs, such as olivine, orthopyroxene, and clinopyroxene), which is potentially re-equilibrated during silicate melt-rock and aqueous fluid-rock interactions in massif and abyssal peridotites. We apply a 3D numerical diffusion modeling technique to provide first-order timescales of complete hydrogen re-equilibration in olivine, clinopyroxene, and orthopyroxene over the temperature range 600–1200 °C.

Fracture-mediated deep seawater flow and mantle hydration on oceanic transform faults

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

2020 Fluid-rock interaction on oceanic transform faults (OTFs) is important for both the deformation behavior of the lithosphere and volatile cycling in the Earth. Rocks deformed and exhumed at OTFs preserve information about the depth extent of fluid percolation and the nature of fluid-rock interactions within these fault zones. In this study, we focus on five dredges from the Shaka and Prince Edward OTFs on the ultraslow spreading Southwest Indian Ridge that recovered significant volumes of deformed mantle rocks.

Peridotites and basalts reveal broad congruence between two independent records of mantle fO2 despite local redox heterogeneity

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

2018 The oxygen fugacity (fO2) of the oceanic upper mantle has fundamental implications for the production of magmas and evolution of the Earth's interior and exterior. Mid-ocean ridge basalts and peridotites sample the oceanic upper mantle, and retain a record of oxygen fugacity. In order to determine whether peridotites and basalts from mid-ocean ridges record congruent information about the fO2 of the Earth's interior, we analyzed 31 basalts and 41 peridotites from the Oblique Segment of the Southwest Indian Ridge.

Size effects resolve discrepancies in 40 years of work on low-temperature plasticity in olivine

Science Advances

2017 The strength of olivine at low temperatures and high stresses in Earth’s lithospheric mantle exerts a critical control on many geodynamic processes, including lithospheric flexure and the formation of plate boundaries. Unfortunately, laboratory-derived values of the strength of olivine at lithospheric conditions are highly variable and significantly disagree with those inferred from geophysical observations. We demonstrate via nanoindentation that the strength of olivine depends on the length scale of deformation, with experiments on smaller volumes of material exhibiting larger yield stresses.

Global variations in abyssal peridotite compositions

Lithos

2016 Abyssal peridotites are ultramafic rocks collected from mid-ocean ridges that are the residues of adiabatic decompression melting. Their compositions provide information on the degree of melting and melt–rock interaction involved in the formation of oceanic lithosphere, as well as providing constraints on pre-existing mantle heterogeneities. This review presents a compilation of abyssal peridotite geochemical data (modes, mineral major elements, and clinopyroxene trace elements) for > 1200 samples from 53 localities on 6 major ridge systems.

Olivine torsion experiments constrain the nature of the oceanic lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2016 Although plate tectonics has seen broad acceptance for Earth, the manner in which lithospheric plates are coupled to Earth’s deeper interior is still heavily debated. In particular, recent seismological observations suggest a sharp, flat base of the lithosphere, whereas thermal models suggest a gradational boundary that deepens with age. Based on laboratory experiments, we suggest that thermal models are most appropriate and that seismic studies are detecting features frozen into the lithosphere after melting at midocean ridges.

Pyroxenes as tracers of mantle water variations

Journal of Geophysical Research

2016 The concentration and distribution of volatiles in the Earth's mantle influence properties such as melting temperature, conductivity, and viscosity. To constrain upper mantle water content, concentrations of H2O, P, and F were measured in olivine, orthopyroxene, and clinopyroxene in mantle peridotites by secondary ion mass spectrometry.