Hydrothermal Vent e cosystems and c onservation
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Abstract:
A decade of Ridge 2000 and related research has yielded new and refined understanding of events and processes that occur on mid-ocean ridge and backarc spreading centers, as reported in this special issue of Oceanography. Exciting exploration has also continued, with the past decade witnessing discovery of vent ecosystems in the Arctic (Pedersen et al., 2010), a new vent biogeographic province in the Southern Ocean (RogersCite
Processes that occur within and across the oceanic crust—in particular along mid‐ocean ridges and oceanic spreading centers—play a huge role in the dynamics of the Earth. The largest fluxes of heat and material between the Earth's mantle, crust, and seawater occur via magmatic, tectonic, and hydrothermal processes along oceanic spreading centers and their vast flanks. Roughly two thirds of the Earth's surface is accreted through magmatic and tectonic processes along mid‐ocean ridges, and subduction of this ocean crust in turn influences mantle compositions. Exchange of elements between ocean crust and seawater strongly influences seawater compositions and leaves a geologic record of fluid‐rock reactions in altered ocean crust. Some of these reactions contribute energy to microbial activity of a largely unexplored biosphere. The dynamics of ridge and ocean crustal processes therefore have enormous implications for thermal, chemical, and biological exchanges between the solid Earth and the hydrosphere.
Hydrosphere
Seafloor Spreading
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A series of dives by the submersible Alvin at hydrothermal fields on the slow‐spreading Mid‐Atlantic Ridge has returned new information about the hydrothermal vents, massive sulfide deposits and vent biota. The dives and related regional plume studies were done in January 1990 from the support vessel RIV Atlantis II.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Biota
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The Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge (AMOR) represents one of the most slow-spreading ridge systems on Earth. Previous attempts to locate hydrothermal vent fields and unravel the nature of venting, as well as the provenance of vent fauna at this northern and insular termination of the global ridge system, have been unsuccessful. Here, we report the first discovery of a black smoker vent field at the AMOR. The field is located on the crest of an axial volcanic ridge (AVR) and is associated with an unusually large hydrothermal deposit, which documents that extensive venting and long-lived hydrothermal systems exist at ultraslow-spreading ridges, despite their strongly reduced volcanic activity. The vent field hosts a distinct vent fauna that differs from the fauna to the south along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The novel vent fauna seems to have developed by local specialization and by migration of fauna from cold seeps and the Pacific.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
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Since a large percentage of the mid‐ocean ridge system remains uncharted and unsampled, studying the diverse processes involved in the generation of new oceanic crust is an ambitious goal that requires international cooperation. The Ridge InterDisciplinary Global Experiment (RIDGE) initiative is doing just that in cooperation with InterRIDGE, an international organization of countries active in mid‐ocean ridge research. The two programs are working to characterize the morphology, structure, composition, biological communities, and energy fluxes of the mid‐ocean ridge system on a global scale. Over the next few years RIDGE will explore the virtually unstudied spreading centers of the Indian Ocean, and InterRIDGE will target the slow‐spreading Southwest Indian Ridge.
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Seamount
Seafloor Spreading
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Beginning:
When Jules Verne made his imaginary journey of exploration to the centre of the earth through the vents in an Icelandic volcano over a hundred years ago, he assumed that all volcanoes are interlinked in a subterranean system. But even his imagination failed to visualise the world-wide system of submarine volcanoes that extends over a distance of over 60,000 kilometres and only breaks the surface of the ocean at Iceland. This mid-oceanic ridge, which spans the entire world ocean, has evolved along the boundaries between the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust. Gakkel Ridge, in the central eastern Arctic Ocean is the northern most spur of the plate boundary between Eurasia and North America, and at the same time the most slowly opening ridge segment in the world, opening only a few millimetres each year.
Seafloor Spreading
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