Mafic

A mafic mineral or rock is a silicate mineral or igneous rock rich in magnesium and iron. Most mafic minerals are dark in color, and common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Common mafic rocks include basalt, diabase and gabbro. Mafic rocks often also contain calcium-rich varieties of plagioclase feldspar. Mafic materials can also be described as ferromagnesian.

Basalt

History

The term mafic is a portmanteau of "magnesium" and "ferric" and was coined by Charles Whitman Cross, Joseph P. Iddings, Louis V. Pirsson, and Henry Stephens Washington in 1912. Cross' group had previously divided the major rock-forming minerals found in igneous rocks into salic minerals, such as quartz, feldspars, or feldspathoids, and femic minerals, such as olivine and pyroxene. However, micas and aluminium-rich amphiboles were excluded, while some calcium minerals containing little iron or magnesium, such as wollastonite or apatite, were included in the femic minerals.^[1] Cross and his coinvestigators later clarified that micas and aluminium amphiboles belonged to a separate category of alferric minerals. They then introduced the term mafic for ferromagnesian minerals of all types, in preference to the term femag coined by A. Johannsen in 1911, whose sound they disliked.^[2][3]

Minerals

The term mafic is still widely used for dark-colored ferromagnesian minerals.^[3] Modern classification schemes, such as the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) classification of igneous rocks, include some light-colored ferromagnesian minerals, such as melilite, in the mafic mineral fraction.^[4] Accessory minerals, such as zircon or apatite, may also be included in the mafic mineral fraction for purposes of precise classification.^[5]

Rocks

When applied to rocks, the term mafic is used primarily as a field term to describe dark-colored igneous rocks.^[5] The term is not used as a rock classification in the IUGS classification scheme.^[4] Mafic rocks are sometimes more precisely defined as igneous rocks with a high proportion of pyroxene and olivine, so that their color index (the volume fraction of dark mafic minerals) is between 50 and 90.^[6] Most mafic volcanic rocks are more precisely classified as basalts.^[7]

Chemically, mafic rocks are sometimes defined as rocks with a silica content between 45 and 55 wt%, corresponding to the silica content of basalt in the TAS classification.^[8] Such rocks are enriched in iron, magnesium and calcium and typically dark in color. In contrast, the felsic rocks are typically light in color and enriched in aluminium and silicon along with potassium and sodium. The mafic rocks also typically have a higher density than felsic rocks. The term roughly corresponds to the older basic rock class.^[9]

Mafic lava, before cooling, has a low viscosity, in comparison with felsic lava, due to the lower silica content in mafic magma. Water and other volatiles can more easily and gradually escape from mafic lava. As a result, eruptions of volcanoes made of mafic lavas are less explosively violent than felsic-lava eruptions.^[10]

See also

• QAPF diagram
• List of minerals
• List of rock types
• Bowen's reaction series

References

1. Cross, Whitman; Iddings, Joseph P.; Pirsson, Louis V.; Washington, Henry S. (September 1902). "A Quantitative Chemico-Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature of Igneous Rocks". The Journal of Geology. 10 (6): 555–690. Bibcode:1902JG.....10..555C. doi:10.1086/621030. S2CID 140683261.
2. Cross, Whitman; Iddings, J. P.; Pirsson, L. V.; Washington, H. S. (September 1912). "Modifications of the "Quantitative System of Classification of Igneous Rocks"". The Journal of Geology. 20 (6): 550–561. Bibcode:1912JG.....20..550C. doi:10.1086/621996. S2CID 129515388.
3. Jackson, Julia A., ed. (1997). "mafic". Glossary of geology (Fourth ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: American Geological Institute. ISBN 0922152349.
4. Le Bas, M. J.; Streckeisen, A. L. (1991). "The IUGS systematics of igneous rocks". Journal of the Geological Society. 148 (5): 825–833. Bibcode:1991JGSoc.148..825L. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.692.4446. doi:10.1144/gsjgs.148.5.0825. S2CID 28548230.
5. Philpotts, Anthony R.; Ague, Jay J. (2009). Principles of igneous and metamorphic petrology (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 137. ISBN 9780521880060.
6. Allaby, Michael (2013). "mafic". A dictionary of geology and earth sciences (Fourth ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199653065.
7. Schmincke, Hans-Ulrich (2003). Volcanism. Berlin: Springer. p. 23. ISBN 978-3-540-43650-8.
8. Nesse, William D. (2000). Introduction to mineralogy. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195106916.
9. Islam, M. R.; Hossain, M. E.; Islam, A. O. (2018). Hydrocarbons in Basement Formations. John Wiley & Sons. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-119-29453-5.
10. "Volcanoes". Columbia University. Retrieved 18 June 2019.