W ord to the Wise

Felsic

& Mafic

John rakovan Department of Geology Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056 rakovajf@muohio.edu

n the description of igneous rocks (see the article on pegmatites of Tanakamiyama, Japan, this issue), two commonly used terms are felsic and mafic. These are both used to indicate the chemical composition of igneous rocks, the silicate minerals that comprise them, and the magmas from which they form (Best 1982; Le Maitre et al. 2002). Felsic is used to describe rocks containing greater than 66 weight percent silica (silicon concentration reported as a neutral oxide, SiO2). The term mafic is used to describe igneous rocks with 4552 weight percent silica. Felsic rocks are usually also enriched in sodium and potassium and depleted in iron, magnesium, and calcium relative to mafic rocks. The mineralogy of an igneous rock depends largely on the chemistry of its parent magma but is also influenced by temperature and pressure conditions during crystallization. Because of such differences, rocks formed from felsic and mafic magmas have contrasting mineralogies. Key minerals in felsic rocks are sodium and potassium feldspars, quartz, feldspathoids, and muscovite. Indeed, the term felsic is a mnemonic, based on this mineralogy, formed from (fe) for feldspar, (l) for lenad (a.k.a. feldspathoid), and (s) for silica, plus (-ic) a suffix meaning having the character of. Likewise, mafic rocks are dominantly composed of iron- and magnesium-rich silicates, specifically olivine, pyroxenes, amphiboles, and biotite. The term mafic comes from (ma) for magnesium and (f) from ferrum, the Latin word for iron, plus (-ic). Calcium-rich plagioclase, although not an iron-magnesium silicate, is also a common constituent in mafic rocks because mafic magmas are enriched in calcium relative to potassium and sodium. Figure 1 summarizes the principal chemical and mineralogical characteristics of the spectrum of common igneous rock types. Note that rock types that fall between felsic and mafic mineralogy are described as intermediate (5266 weight percent silica), and those with less than 45 weight percent silica are described as ultramafic. The most common felsic rocks are granite and rhyolite, whereas the most common mafic rocks are gabbro and basalt. Peridotite, a family of ultramafic rocks (including dunite, wehrlite, harzburgite, and lherzolite) that dominates the earths upper mantle, consists primarily of olivine and pyroxenes. Although exceptions abound, there is a general relationship between color intensity and the type of igneous rock (felsic, intermediate, or mafic). Because the minerals that comprise felsic rocks are often light-colored, felsic rocks are

Figure 2 Figure 1. Igneous rock diagram (modified from Grotzinger et al. 2007). Any vertical line (e.g., the red dashed line) through the diagram will indicate the minerals present (in relative amounts proportional to the length of the line segment passing through each mineral field), the percent silica, and the relative amounts of Na, K, Ca, Fe, and Mg in the rock type that the line intersects. Figure 2. Examples of felsic and mafic igneous rocks from Antarctica. Left: basalt (Ross Island); right: granite (Taylor Valley, Transantarctic Mountains).

Dr. John Rakovan, an executive editor of Rocks & Minerals, is a professor of mineralogy and geochemistry at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

usually light-colored. Likewise, because iron-rich silicates are typically dark-colored, the mafic rocks that they comprise are also dark-colored. A comparison of the most common felsic and mafic rock types, granite and basalt, exemplify this color difference nicely (fig. 2). A striking illustration of this color relationship is seen in an aerial image of the Harrat Khaybar volcanic field in Saudi Arabia, where both felsic and mafic rocks are juxtaposed (fig. 3).
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posed of 90100 percent calcium-rich plagioclase feldspar (i.e., labradorite, bytownite, or anorthite). The dark color is the result of small amounts of finely disseminated inclusions of iron and titanium oxides, which act as pigments (Don Lindsey, pers. comm., 2009). Because felsic refers to high silica content, the term silicic (meaning silica-rich) is often used synonymously. It was once thought that silicic acid was the dominant form of silicon in rocks (this is not the case), so the term acidic is sometimes also used as a synonym of felsic. In contrast, mafic rocks are sometimes referred to as being basic (i.e., depleted in silicic acid). All of these terms have their greatest significance in their relationship to earth chemistry, which in turn is related to where and how magmas form and evolve; this is the essence of igneous petrology (the study of igneous rocks and the conditions in which they form).
Acknowledgments I thank Kendall Hauer and Liz Widom for their careful reviews of this column. REFERENCES Best, M. G. 1982. Igneous and metamorphic petrology. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co. Grotzinger, J., T. H. Jordan, F. Press, and R. Siever. 2007. Understanding Earth. 5th edition. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co. Le Maitre, R. W., A. Streckeisen, B. Zanettin, M. J. Le Bas, B. Bonin, and P. Bateman, eds. 2002. Igneous rocks: A classification and glossary of terms. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, S. R., and S. M. McLennan. 2009. Planetary crusts: Their composition, origin, and evolution. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. q

Figure 4 Figure 3. Aerial image of the Harrat Khaybar volcanic field, Saudi Arabia. Dark areas are mafic volcanic rocks (basalts). The lightcolored volcanics are felsic (rhyolite) in composition. Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. Astronaut photograph ISS016-E-34524. Figure 4. Mantle xenoliths (ultramafics) in basalt (mafic) from San Carlos, Arizona. The upper (green) xenolith is a peridotite (variety lherzolite) and the lower (brown) one is a pyroxenite.

Color, however, is a complex phenomenon, especially in rocks, and is related to the presence or absence of chromophores (color-causing elements) and their oxidation states (valences), pigments, and light-scattering phenomena. This complexity leads to many exceptions to the relationship described above. One such exception can be seen by comparing the colors of two ultramafic xenoliths in basalt from San Carlos, Arizona (fig. 4). The upper xenolith, dominated by iron-poor olivine (forsterite) with small bits of chromiumrich diopside (emerald-green) and orthopyroxene (very dark green), is light-colored overall; this is not what the above generalization would predict for an ultramafic rock. In contrast, the much darker color of the lower xenolith, dominated by pyroxenes of a different composition, agrees better with this generalization. Of the eight most abundant elements in the earths crust (O, Si, Al, Fe, Mg, Ca, K, and Na) and mantle (O, Si, Mg, Fe, Al, Ca, Na, and Cr), iron is the dominant chromophore in minerals and rocks. It is interesting to note that although the earths mantle is composed of ultramafic rocks, it is slightly depleted in iron relative to the crust (Taylor and McLennan 2009), and that the ultramafic rocks of the mantle, such as the peridotite in figure 3, are generally lighter in color than mafic crustal rocks. Another example is the commonly dark to very dark color of anorthosite, an igneous rock com560 ROCKS & MINERALS