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Hydrogen is a major, a minor, and a trace constituent of a broad variety of minerals in the Earth's lithosphere. Usually bonded to oxygen in the structures of minerals (in the form of OH- and H2O, rarely also as H3O+, forumlaand forumla groups) it contributes to the formation of stoichiometric hydrates and hydroxides, many of them with economic importance, such as zeolites, gypsum CaSO4 · 2H2O, manganite MnO(OH) etc. Even though these stoichiometric hydrous phases are most common in the upper crust, they also persist to greater depths in subduction zones and may be responsible for recycling of water (Pawley, 1994) down to the mantle region (e.g. lawsonite, talc, K-amphiboles etc.). Because of the enormous volume of the Earth's mantle, nominally anhydrous minerals under the high P/T conditions of the Earth's mantle that contain hydrogen only as minor or trace constituents, play an important role for the water budget of the Earth (Beran, 1999 still a controversy as to whether the mantle is rather enriched (Thompson, 1992) or depleted (Dixon et al., 2002) in hydrogen through the activity of subduction zones.

Even as a trace constituent, hydrogen has a strong influence on chemical and physical properties of mineral phases (Mackwell et al., 1985) and thus deserves thorough investigation. It may be responsible for dramatic changes of mechanical properties, e.g. in the case of hydrolytic weakening of quartz (Griggs, 1967; Kronenberg et al., 1986), it has a major impact on the formation of melts and their rheology (Hirth & Kohlstedt, 1996),

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