We report new geochemical data for boninites and backarc basin‐type basalts recovered from the northern termination of the Tonga trench and Lau Basin. Boninitic pillow lavas, ranging from high‐Mg compositions to andesites and dacites, have been erupted within large submarine volcanic edifices (calderas and volcanoes) associated with active rifting of both the northern end of the Tofua volcanic arc and in a backarc position relative to the arc volcanoes on the northern Tonga Ridge. The mantle sources in the area are a complex mixture of (1) the “normal” Tongan mantle wedge source that has “Pacific”‐type isotopic signature with (2) the plume‐related components (EMI, EMII, and HIMU) and (3) an “Indian”‐type source upwelling beneath the backarc spreading. Some of these sources, such as the “normal” mantle wedge and variably depleted residual plume mantle, are fluxed by subduction components from the slab, which produces boninites, tholeiites, and mixtures thereof. Other mantle sources, such as “Indian”‐type backarc mantle and also some of the plume mantle, produce melts due to adiabatic decompression. These melts are variably mixed with each other and with the slab‐fluid fluxed subduction‐related melts to form the observed spectrum of magma compositions.

[1] A wide variety of different rock types were dredged from the Tonga fore arc and trench between 8000 and 3000 m water depths by the 1996 Boomerang voyage. 40 Ar whole rock and U-Pb zircon dating suggest that these fore arc rocks were erupted episodically from the Cretaceous to the Pliocene (102 to 2 Ma). The geochemistry suggests that MOR-type basalts and dolerites were erupted in the Cretaceous, that island arc tholeiites were erupted in the Eocene and that back arc basin and island arc tholeiite and boninite were erupted episodically after this time. The ages generally become younger northward suggesting that fore arc crust was created in the south at around 48-52 Ma and was extended northward between 35 and 28 Ma, between 9 and 15 Ma and continuing to the present-day. The episodic formation of the fore arc crust suggested by this data is very different to existing models for fore arc formation based on the Bonin-Marianas arc. The Bonin-Marianas based models postulate that the basaltic fore arc rocks were created between 52 and 49 Ma at the beginning of subduction above a rapidly foundering west-dipping slab. Instead a model where the 52 Ma basalts that are presently in a fore arc position were created in the arc-back arc transition behind the 57-35 Ma Loyalty-Three Kings arc and placed into a fore arc setting after arc reversal following the start of collision with New Caledonia is proposed for the oldest rocks in Tonga. This is followed by growth of the fore arc northward with continued eruption of back arc and boninitic magmas after that time.

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