Oceanic plateaus are regions of overthickened oceanic crust and are often thought to form from the interaction of mantle plumes with oceanic lithosphere. These regions can cover vast areas of the ocean basins and represent a highly elevated magmatic flux relative to normal mid-ocean ridge spreading. Oceanic plateaus are considered...
The Cook-Austral island chain has been the center of debate for many years. Contrary to the classical hotspot hypothesis, this volcanic island chain does not exhibit a linear age progression with a single node of active volcanism, but instead shows evidence of young volcanism at several points along the chain....
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AnthonyA. P. Koppers
The Cook-Austral island chain has been the center of debate for
The spatial distribution and geologic histories of submarine volcanoes provide insight into submarine eruptive behavior, deep earth processes and plate tectonics. This dissertation examines the evolution of individual submarine volcanic edifices as well as linear trails of seamounts at three spatial and temporal scales.
In order to understand constructive and...
Large igneous provinces (LIPs) and intraplate seamounts reflect of anomalous mantle melting and illuminate interior processes of the Earth. These features are in all ocean basins and show the mantle’s evolution over time, then can provide information on plate tectonic processes, such as plate motion over time, spreading ridge formation,...
Variability in the terrigenous (land-derived) fraction of marine sediments,
including pollen and rock fragments, reflects the effects of regional climate change on
continentally derived runoff, ice extent, vegetation and ocean circulation. The transport of
this continental material to the seafloor must be understood in order to interpret the
terrigenous sediment...
Earth’s mantle extends to nearly 3000 km depth, comprises >80 % of Earth’s total volume, and has the largest influence on the primordial and radiogenic heat budget. Despite its importance, the structure and composition of the mantle is still debated. There are three primary models for Earth’s mantle structure that...
Seamounts are windows into the deep Earth that are helping to
elucidate various deep Earth processes. For example, thermal and mechanical
properties of oceanic lithosphere can be determined from the flexing of oceanic
crust caused by the growth of seamounts on top of it. Seamount trails also are
excellent recorders...
The geologic processes at work in American Samoa have long been a point of scientific debate. Of its numerous volcanic formations, few breach sea level, leaving an enormous proportion of their mass unavailable to traditional observation. This study aims to describe the deep sea geomorphology of American Samoa through compilation,...
This dissertation uses argon geochronology and cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating methods to address three research questions. The first question concerns a geomagnetic instability recorded in lava flows on the island of Floreana in the Galapagos Archipelago. Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field (intensity and orientation) occur frequently throughout geologic...
Seamounts are ubiquitous features of the seafloor that form part of the fabric of oceanic crust. When a seamount enters a subduction zone, it has a major affect on forearc morphology, the uplift history of the island arc, and the structure of the downgoing slab. It is not known, however,...
The Kane Oceanic Core Complex (OCC) is a valuable window into crustal architecture and chemical composition of the lithosphere beneath a slow-spreading ocean ridge. A suite of > 30 samples (comprised of whole rocks, mineral separates and basalt glasses) has been analyzed for ³He/⁴He isotope ratios and He concentrations. Gas...
This dataset is a collection of digital appendices for the PhD dissertation by Kellie T. Wall (2022), entitled "The 3.1 Ma to 100 ka Goat Rocks Volcanic Complex: Persistence and Evolution of Magmatism at a Long-Lived Major Andesite Locus on the Cascade Arc." Each appendix is a file (e.g. Word...
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...
The Louisville seamount trail has been recognized as one of the key examples of hot spot volcanism, comparable to the classic volcanic Hawaiian-Emperor lineaments. The published total fusion ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar data of Watts et al. [1988] showed an astonishing linear age progression, firmly establishing Louisville as a fixed hot spot in...
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,...
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...
Seamount research, more often than not,
is carried out by highly specialized science
teams with narrowly focused science objectives.
As a result, different seamount science
disciplines often do not collaborate or are
not even aware of each other. However, it is
obvious that interdisciplinary collaboration
is the most successful approach...
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...
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,...