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A hotspot's position on the Earth's surface is independent of tectonic plate boundaries, and so hotspots may create a chain of volcanoes as the plates move above them. There are two hypotheses that attempt to explain their origins. One suggests that hotspots are due to mantle plumes that rise as thermal diapirs from the core–mantle boundary. [2]
The Réunion hotspot is a volcanic hotspot which currently lies under the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The Chagos-Laccadive Ridge and the southern part of the Mascarene Plateau are volcanic traces of the Réunion hotspot. [1] The hotspot is believed to have been active for over 65 million years.
A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth's mantle, hypothesized to explain anomalous volcanism. [2] Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hotspots, such as Hawaii or Iceland, and large igneous provinces such as the Deccan and Siberian Traps.
The area of long-term eruption (the hotspot), known as the Réunion hotspot, is suspected of both causing the Deccan Traps eruption and opening the rift that separated the Mascarene Plateau from India. Regional crustal thinning supports the theory of this rifting event and likely encouraged the rise of the plume in this area. [6]
A flood basalt (or plateau basalt [1]) is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that covers large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava. Many flood basalts have been attributed to the onset of a hotspot reaching the surface of the Earth via a mantle plume. [2]
The Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain is a series of volcanoes and seamounts extending about 6,200 km (3,900 mi) across the Pacific Ocean. [n 1] The chain was produced by the movement of the ocean crust over the HawaiĘ»i hotspot, an upwelling of hot rock from the Earth's mantle.
The Anahim hotspot is a hypothesized hotspot in the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada.It has been proposed as the candidate source for volcanism in the Anahim Volcanic Belt, a 300 kilometres (190 miles) long chain of volcanoes and other magmatic features that have undergone erosion.
The volcanism that occurred in the Siberian Traps resulted in copious amounts of magma being ejected from the Earth's crust—leaving permanent traces of rock from the same time period of the mass extinction that can be examined today. [23] More specifically, zircon is found in some of the volcanic rocks.