Quantifying eruptive timing and volcanic accretion on the Southern East Pacific Rise

Mid-ocean ridges are crucial to our understanding of volcanic processes and magma dynamics, and these processes also affect thriving communities of organisms on the seafloor near many of these tectonic spreading centers, centered around hydrothermal vents.

What do flows of submarine lava look like on the fast-spreading southern East Pacific Rise (SEPR)? How big are they? How old? How frequently do they erupt? Does this change along the spreading ridge-- do the answers to these questions differ from the answers along the northern East Pacific Rise? What can these eruptions tell us about how melt is generated and distributed?

These are among the questions that we aim to answer on our cruise.

We are using a Human Occupied Vehicle (HOV), an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), and near-bottom sidescan, bathymetric, geochemical, and magnetic anomaly data, to investigate these questions. Learn more at the other 'Research' tabs!

Map showing approximate location of the East Pacific Rise. Our study site is at 17-20 °S on the EPR.

^{Image courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution & the U.S. National Deep Submergence Facility}