Lithium isotope systematics and water/rock interactions in a shallow-water hydrothermal system at Milos Island, Greece

Abstract

The active venting fluids of Milos Island, located within the southern Aegean Sea, belong to a shallow-water hydrothermal system (< 200 m depth) that shows chemical compositions and evolution processes comparable to those of mid-ocean ridges (MOR). In this study, we analyze Li and δ⁷Li in 69 vent water samples, grouped into two types based on their salt content. The low-Cl end-member (EM) Cave fluids show a relatively high Li content (0.39–0.54 mM) with MORB-like δ⁷Li (∼4.5 ‰, MORB = 3.7 ‰) compared to that of seawater, and the high-Cl brine fluids contain remarkably high Li (6.14–10.6 mM) and variable δ⁷Li (1.4–8.7 ‰). The latter fluids may have derived from metamorphic basement modified by seawater interactions at ∼300 °C. A scenario using a steady-state dissolution/precipitation model can generate consistent Li and δ⁷Li patterns, where linear correlations of Cl and Li suggest phase separation occurred after water/rock interaction at depth. On the contrary, no significant δ⁷Li variation in most Milos fluids suggests limited isotopic fractionation occurred during phase separation. More importantly, the detected Li enrichment in the high-Cl fluids implies a large Li flux, ∼3.4 × 10⁷ mol/yr, to the ocean from the Milos system. Assuming that 10% of the world's shallow-water systems discovered to date have similar Li outputs to those of Milos, this Li flux would represent ∼1.8% of MOR hydrothermal fluxes which is on the order of ∼13 × 10⁹ mol/yr. These results emphasize the importance of Li flux derived from shallow-water hydrothermal systems, which should not be excluded from the calculation of the marine Li budget and its impact on the global silicate weathering cycles.