Evidence for melt migration enhancing recrystallization of metastable assemblages in mafic lower crust, Fiordland, New Zealand

A major arc batholith, the Western Fiordland Orthogneiss (WFO) in Fiordland, New Zealand, exhibits irregular, spatially restricted centimetre-scale recrystallization from two-pyroxene hornblende granulite to garnet granulite flanking felsic dykes. At Lake Grave, northern Fiordland, the composition and texture of narrow (12 kbar, suggesting that garnet granulite may have formed with 90%) of the two-pyroxene hornblende granulite assemblages. These results indicate the strongly metastable nature of assemblages in mafic lower arc crust during deep burial and demonstrate that the degree of reaction in the case of Fiordland is related to interaction with migrating melts