Editor's Summary
26 June 2008
Deep-sea volcanism on the Gakkel Ridge
The latest deep submergence technologies have been used to perform the first high-definition photographic survey of the ultra-slow spreading Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Basin, focusing on an area that is believed to have experienced a major eruption event in 1999. The images show that the axial valley at 4,000 m water depth is blanketed by an extensive set of pyroclastic deposits, raising important questions regarding the accumulation and discharge of magmatic volatiles on such ridges and demonstrating that large-scale pyroclastic activity is possible along even the deepest portions of the global mid-ocean ridge volcanic system.
Authors: Abstractions
doi:10.1038/7199xb
Letter: Explosive volcanism on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge, Arctic Ocean
Robert A. Sohn, Claire Willis, Susan Humphris, Timothy M. Shank, Hanumant Singh, Henrietta N. Edmonds, Clayton Kunz, Ulf Hedman, Elisabeth Helmke, Michael Jakuba, Bengt Liljebladh, Julia Linder, Christopher Murphy, Ko-ichi Nakamura, Taichi Sato, Vera Schlindwein, Christian Stranne, Maria Tausenfreund, Lucia Upchurch, Peter Winsor, Martin Jakobsson & Adam Soule
doi:10.1038/nature07075
