Reply to the comments of S. Karato on “Petrofabrics and seismic properties of garnet peridotites from the UHP Sulu terrane (China)” by Xu et al. [Tectonophysics 421 (2006) 111–127]

We thank Karato for his interest in our recent paper in Tectonophysics [Xu, Z.Q., Wang, Q., Ji, S.C.. Chen, J., Zeng, L.S., Yang, J.S., Chen, F.Y., Liang, F.H., Wenk, H.R., 2006. Petrofabrics and seismic properties of garnet peridotite from the UHP Sulu terrane (China): Implications for olivine deformation mechanism in a cold and dry subducting continental slab. Tectonophysics 421, 111–127]. However, Karato is incorrect to take water or water-related species (herein referred to generically as ‘water’) as an almost unique cause for any olivine fabric transition in nature no matter what geological conditions are. In this Reply, we will first give a succinct introduction to the context of the ongoing debate, and then provide some additional arguments in favour of our conclusion that “the olivine C-type fabric of the Zhimafang garnet-bearing peridotites was formed under the conditions of high pressure, low temperature and low water content during the subduction of cold and dry supracrustal rocks of the Yangtze plate”. The map of olivine slip systems as a function of differential stress and water content, drawn by Karato and coworkers, cannot be reliably extrapolated to Earth’s interior until relevant scaling laws have been established. The role of high water content on the fabric transitions is more likely to modify recrystallization kinetics than to switch the dominant slip systems.