Carbon-Bearing Phases throughout Earth’s Interior : Evolution through Space and Time

This chapter reviews the distribution of carbon-bearing phases in the crust, mantle, and the core. It presents conditions of stability of various carbon-bearing phases – such as carbonate minerals, carbon-bearing fluids, graphite, diamond, and carbides – and how these stabilities put limits on the carbon budget of the mantle. The chapter also discusses expectations about how stability may have varied throughout geologic time, given the thermal and redox evolution of the Earth. Finally, this chapter also presents recent discoveries about carbon mineral evolution.