I am delighted to have been awarded the Murchison Fund by the Geological Society of London. The GSL award this each year to an early career scientist for published contributions to “hard rock” geology. I am very grateful for the nomination, and for all of the wonderful scientists I have been able to collaborate with over the last few years.
The University of Iceland published a press release on the award, in Icelandic and English.
Matthews, Wong, Gleeson. Preprint available on EarthArxiv, doi: 10.31223/X5JP7X.
PyMelt is our new open-source python library for calculating the melting behaviour of lithologically heterogeneous mantle. Built into pyMelt are a number of published models for the melting behaviour of individual lithologies, including the Katz et al. (2003) lherzolite melting model, and the lherzolite and pyroxenite melting models that we developed in Matthews et al. (2021), and others. PyMelt implements the equations of Phipps Morgan (2001) to calculate the melting behaviour when these lithologies are in complete thermal equilibrium with one another.
There are also numerous methods built on top of this for calculating other melting region parameters, for example the trace element abundances in lavas, the crustal thickness produced at spreading ridges, or the magmatic productivity at intra-plate settings. To get started check out our interactive cloud-based tutorials on myBinder!
Wieser, Iacovino, Matthews, Moore Allison, Earth & Space Science 9(2), e2021EA001932. doi: 10.1029/2021EA001932
One of the new capabilities offered by our VESIcal magma solubility modelling software is the ease with which we can compare the predictions of different solubility models and perform sensitivity tests on parameters about which we make assumptions. In this article we review the most widely used solubility models and examine the origins of the differences in their predictions. We also use VESIcal to demonstrate the effect of neglecting the contribution of dissolved CO2 when calculating saturation pressures in H2O-rich arc systems. VESIcal also makes it very easy to rapidly calculate many isobar-curves, and we use this functionality to critically assess the utility of plotting melt inclusion suites on top of a single set of isobars.
To read more about the VESIcal software, check out the first part of the VESIcal publications. VESIcal can be used in the cloud by signing up to the ENKI server.
As part of the VESIcal workshop we ran at vVMSG in January 2022, I gave a short presentation about the advantages of doing science using python, and the importance of open-source code. You can watch this presentation on YouTube.
Soderman, Shorttle, Matthews, Williams, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 318, 388-414 (2021). doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2021.12.008
In this paper we assessed the utility of novel stable isotopes (Mg, Ca, Fe, V, and Cr) in lavas for tracing mantle lithological heterogeneity and melting processes, and in particular the prospects for combining multiple stable isotope proxies to uniquely identify these processes. Major element isotope systems may better respond to lithological heterogeneity because, unlike trace elements, their concentrations do not vary by orders of magnitude between different mantle components.
This work (led by PhD student C. Soderman) significantly expanded the capabilities of the stable-isotope fractionation code I originally developed (and published a proof-of-concept).
Iacovino, Matthews, Wieser, Moore, Bégué, Earth and Space Science 8 (11), e2020EA001584 (2021) doi: 10.1029/2020EA001584
An interactive version of this manuscript is available on myBinder: 
We introduce our open-source solubility modelling engine, VESIcal, in this manuscript. Many of the most commonly used volatile solubility models are built into VESIcal and calculations can be performed using a common interface. This is the first time multiple solubility models have been so easily accessible at the same time, allowing their full potential to be exploited. Furthermore, calculations on large datasets are automated and can be performed in minutes or less.
I was one of the principle developers of the code and oversaw the construction of the generic model engine, and the implementation of several of the empirical models. The code is hosted in a GitHub repository (github.com/kaylai/VESIcal), and the documentation is available at vesical.readthedocs.io.
VESIcal is a new tool for calculating solubilities of CO2-H2O fluids/vapours in magmatic systems. It provides a powerful interface for many of the most frequently used solubility models, enabling the calculation of saturation pressures, degassing paths, and fluid/melt compositions. The tool leverages the power and flexibility of the python programming language, but most calculations require very little coding experience. In this short workshop we will introduce VESIcal, some of the solubility models that are built into it, and we will demonstrate how fast and easy it is to obtain results, even when using large datasets.
Workshop Instructors: Simon Matthews (University of Iceland) & Penny Wieser (Oregon State University)
The workshop will take place on Wednesday 12th January 10:00-12:00 GMT on Zoom, as part of the virtual-VMSG meeting programme. Attendees will receive an email from the Geological Society of London with a link to the Zoom meeting. Following the meeting, all the workshop resources will be available at github.com/simonwmatthews/VESIcal_Workshop_VMSG22 including links to the lectures and practical demonstrations.
To participate in the hands-on exercises, you do not need to install anything on your own computer. Instead, all the calculations are performed on a cloud computing server. The only thing you need to access the server is a modern web browser (I find Chrome offers the best performance, but other browsers should work just fine).
None! Other than an interest in volatile solubility modelling. You do not need any prior experience with coding (in fact you don’t need this to use VESIcal at all), using computation servers, or anything technical beyond using a web browser. We will show you everything else, and we will be on hang to help you get started.
However, please follow the instructions below before the workshop, and ideally as possible.
NOTE: We are providing access to the server in advance of the workshop so that you can check you can get access to it and solve any problems before the workshop starts. Please do not run calculations on here before the workshop. All computation time costs credits, and we have only a limited quantity available for the workshop. If you want to explore the ENKI-server before the workshop, see http://www.enki-portal.org for more information. Any misuse of the server will result in you being banned from it
For more information about VESIcal, see https://vesical.readthedocs.io, or read the VESIcal papers here:
Gleeson, Soderman, Matthews, Cottaar, Gibson, G3, 22, e2021GC009932 (2021). doi: 10.1029/2021GC009932
The Galápagos islands preserve significant geochemical variability in their lavas, which varies consistently with spatial position. It is thought that much of this heterogeneity derives from melting of recycled and primordial mantle components. At the base of the mantle from which the Galápagos plume rises is a large low shear velocity province (LLSVP), however its origin remains enigmatic. LLSVPS have variously been interpreted as primordial mantle heterogeneities or piles of recycled oceanic crust.
If recycled oceanic crust is contributing to the magmatism, we should expect to see evidence for pyroxenite melting, This study demonstrated that the strongest pyroxenite signatures are found in a narrow band offset from the centre of the mantle plume. The lack of evidence for pyroxenite in the centre of the plume, the part most likely to be sampling the LLSVP, could indicate that the LLSVP material is not recycled oceanic crust, but this recycled material might be present on the margins of the LLSVP.
This study made use of the pyMelt mantle melting package (github.com/simonwmatthews/pyMelt) and the THERMOCALC results we published in Soderman et al. (2021).
Kahl, Bali, Guðfinnsson, Neave, Ubide, Van Der Meer, Matthews, Journal of Petrology 62(9) (2021). doi: 10.1093/petrology/egab054
The Snæfellsness volcanic zone in Iceland is an example of off-rift magmatism. Melt eruption rates are much lower than in Iceland’s neo-volcanic zones, and the eruptive products are more alkalic and show greater geochemical enrichment. It might, therefore, be expected that magma storage and transport processes work differently beneath Snæfellsness. In this manuscript the crystal cargoes of two eruptions Búðahraun and Berserkjahraun are analysed.
The chemically diverse crystals record complex petrogenetic histories most likely occurring during magma storage in both the lower- and mid-crust. The Berserkjahraun crystals I analysed for melt inclusions (published in Matthews et al., 2021) contributed to this study.
The photo shows the panoramic view across the mountains of Snæfellsness, with the Buðahraun lava flow in the foreground.
Williams, Matthews, Rizo, Shorttle, Science Advances 7(11), eabc7394 (2021). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abc7394
Evidence for an ancient magma ocean on Earth is preserved in the geochemistry of 3.7 billion year old metabasalts from Isua, Greenland. Previously work suggested these rocks are derived from melting a mantle source formed by Bridgmanite crystallisation and accumulation in the lower mantle. Bridgmanite crystallisation has previously been proposed to result in oxidation of the mantle, as it incorporates Fe3+ into its crystal structure, even when the magma it crystallises from contains only Fe2+. To balance the reaction Fe-metal is produced, which could be extracted efficiently to the core.
This reaction is thought to be associated with a fractionation in Fe-isotopes, such that the remaining bridgmanite enriched mantle should have an excess of 57Fe and 56Fe over 54Fe. In this study we demonstrated that such a fractionation is present within the Isua rocks, providing further confirmation for these magma ocean processes having taken place on the early Earth. However, the concentration of trace elements in the lavas suggest a more complex process, involving remelting and recrystallisation in the lower mantle.
To explore the consequences of these processes further, we performed THERMOCALC phase-equilibria modelling to determine how these magma-ocean derived mantle lithologies will melt in the upper mantle. We found that our hypothesised source for the Isua metabasalts melts at an anomalously low temperature. This would likely mean that such heterogeneities were rapidly melted out of the mantle, their evidence being largely erased.
The image is Figure 5 in the manuscript. It shows one such iteration of the phase-equilibria calculations. See the manuscript for further explanation.
Simon Matthews 