On 3 April 2001, a 20 kg point source of fluorescein dye was released 30 m above the bottom of the active summit caldera of Vailulu’u submarine volcano, Samoa. Vailulu’u crater is 2000 m wide and at water depths of 600–1000 m, with the bottom 200 m completely enclosed; it...
Many Earth science disciplines are currently experiencing the emergence of new ways of data
publication and the establishment of an information technology infrastructure for data archiving and
exchange. Building on efforts to standardize data and metadata publication in geochemistry [Staudigel et
al., 2002], here we discuss options for data publication,...
South Pacific intraplate volcanoes have been active since the Early Cretaceous. Their HIMU-EMI-EMII mantle sources can be traced back into the West Pacific Seamount Province (WPSP) using plate tectonic reconstructions, implying that these distinctive components are enduring features within the Earth's mantle for, at least, the last 120 Myr. These...
We report new ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages for the oldest Pacific oceanic floor at Ocean Drilling Program Site 801C in the Pigafetta basin and Site 1149D close to the Izu-Bonin subduction zone in the Nadezhda basin. These ages were determined by applying high-resolution incremental heating experiments (including 15–30 heating steps) to better...
Over the last three decades the first-order correlation in morphology and orientation of seamount trails
has been called upon to support the concept of a ‘‘fixed’’ Pacific hot spot frame of reference and to explain
the Hawaii-Emperor bend (HEB) by a dramatic change in Pacific plate motion. In this paper,...
The summit crater of Vailulu’u Seamount, the youngest volcano in the Samoan chain, hosts an active
hydrothermal system with profound impact on the ocean water column inside and around its crater (2 km
wide and 407 m deep at a 593 m summit depth). The turbidity of the ocean water...
Investigations of the behavior of the geomagnetic field on geological timescales rely on globally distributed data sets from dated lava flows. We present the first suitable data from the Arctic region, comprising 37 paleomagnetic directions from Jan Mayen (71°N, 0.2–461 ka) and Spitsbergen (79°N, 1–9.2 Ma) and five paleointensity results....
Vailulu’u seamount is an active underwater volcano that marks the end of the Samoan hotspot trail (Hart et al., 2000). Vailulu’u has a simple conical morphology (Figure 1) with a largely enclosed volcanic crater at relatively shallow water depths, ranging from 590 m (highest point on the crater rim) to...
Reading through this issue of Oceanography, it will become
apparent that researchers in different disciplines see their
seamounts in quite different ways. The term seamount has been
defined many times (e.g., Menard, 1964; Wessel, 2001; Schmidt and
Schmincke, 2000; Pitcher et al., 2007; International Hydrographic
Organization, 2008; Wessel et al.,...
Lō`ihi Seamount defines the volcanically active, leading edge in the Hawaiian hotspot chain. It is located on the submarine flank of Mauna Loa, 30 km south of the island of Hawai`i. Lō`ihi’s summit is at 975-m water depth (Pisces Peak), and the seamount has a pronounced southern rift that extends...