Theme Closing: the end of 2009.

Theme Description:
Creation of the Earth’s oceanic crust occurs unseen in the deep-sea, through intrusive magmatism and eruptive events along the global mid-ocean ridge. Rare opportunities to detect and observe magmatic events at ridges have revealed an astonishing host of transient and rapidly-evolving seafloor, subseafloor, and water column phenomena. In April 2006 evidence for a recent dike intrusion and eruption event was detected at the East Pacific Rise (EPR) near 9°50′N. At the time of eruption, a suite of multi-disciplinary time-series monitoring studies were underway at the site as part of the NSF-supported Ridge 2000 program. These studies continue post-eruption and provide a unique multi-disciplinary view of the environmental conditions leading up to and following a seafloor eruption/intrusion event, and of the response of the chemosynthetic biological community to this event. Studies of these recent events are embedded in the larger context of other ongoing investigations at the EPR 8º-11ºN which examine behavior and properties of this fast-spreading ridge at a complete range of spatial (micro-regional) and temporal (seconds to million year) scales. This theme will include new studies about the nature of the physical-chemical and biological systems before, during and after recent eruptions, and about the behavior and properties of the EPR, throughout the Ridge 2000 EPR 8º-11ºN Integrated Study Site.

This page is designed to facilitate communication between contributing and potential authors and help minimize overlap in manuscript content. We encourage authors to send titles of their manuscripts both submitted or in preparation for posting as comments below. Authors may use this interface for communicating about submissions to the Theme.

Information obtained by R/V Knorr cruise Apr 24-26, 2006, and during an ongoing R/V New Horizon cruise (on site May 10~17) indicates that a very recent seafloor eruption has occurred at the EPR 9N Integrated Studies Site (ISS).
See overview of the initial findings and information sent from New Horizon.

A second response cruise is now scheduled on Atlantis in late June. Eight Alvin dives are confirmed for this cruise and discussion of dive and night program activities is currently underway. All researchers are invited to take part in this discussion- input from investigators with previous main experience at other sites is welcome.

An explanation of the process for planning the Atlantis cruise in June was sent to the community May 3 email
Karen Von Damm is leading discussion of science priorities and cruise objectives. Please submit a comment here or email it to ridge2000@ucsd.edu and we can post it for you. Time is very short so please provide your input right away so that, as a group, we can design a plan that will optimize the dataset obtained in this very important early time period following the eruption.
If your comment has related detailed information that you would like to make available, R2K office can post that for you (send email to ridge2000@ucsd.edu with a PDF attachment). It will be linked here with title that indicates your name and comment number.

BartlettInfo (Comment #3)

HardyInfo (Comment #8)

RubinInfo (Comment #12)