Geophysical and biogeochemical processes associated with fluid venting from active and passive continental margins will receive significant scientific and economic attention
into the next century and are of major societal relevance. An important unknown among these interrelated processes is the role played by methane gas hydrates, at and below the...
A massive release of methane on the Cascadia Hydrate Ridge was documented
during a ROPOS program in August 1998, consistent with previously reported
observations in 1996. An extensive survey of the seafloor revealed that the
seeps lie within a narrow band trending 109 degrees. This feature parallels larger
mounds imaged...
Methane derived authigenic carbonate (MDAC) precipitation occurs within marine sediments as a byproduct of the microbial anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). While these carbonates form in chemical and isotopic equilibrium with the fluids from which they precipitate, burial diagenesis and recrystallization can overprint these signals. Plane polarized light (PPL) and...
During the last 15 years, numerous geophysical surveys and geological sampling and coring expeditions have helped to characterize the tectonic setting, subsurface stratigraphy, and gas hydrate occurrence and abundance within the region of the accretionary wedge surrounding Hydrate Ridge. Because of these investigations, Hydrate Ridge has developed as an international...
A 3D seismic volume was acquired summer 2000 over the southern end of Hydrate Ridge (FIR), an anomalously shallow ridge 100 km offshore Newport, Oregon. The survey followed a succession of scientific expeditions aimed at studying the gas hydrates present in the shallow subsurface that gave the name to the...