Water Storage in the Earth's Mantle: Understanding the Process of OH Incorperation in Olivine

The amount of water in the Earth's mantle is thought to be sufficient to replace the surface oceans more than ten times. Whether this water exists in a fluid, melt, or mineral is important for understanding a range of mantle properties. The entire upper mantle water budget may be accommodated at defect sites in the mineral olivine. However, defects found in natural olivine do not correspond to those produced experimentally. Therefore, previous conclusions on water storage in the mantle are questionable. To address this problem the mechanism of water incorporation in olivine will be investigated using experimental petrology and spectroscopy.