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An immense shield volcano within the Shatsky Rise oceanic plateau, northwest Pacific Ocean

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Abstract

Most oceanic plateaux are massive basaltic volcanoes. However, the structure of these volcanoes, and how they erupt and evolve, is unclear, because they are remote and submerged beneath the oceans. Here we use multichannel seismic profiles and rock samples taken from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program core sites to analyse the structure of the Tamu Massif, the oldest and largest edifice of the Shatsky Rise oceanic plateau in the north-western Pacific Ocean. We show that the Tamu Massif is a single, immense volcano, constructed from massive lava flows that emanated from the volcano centre to form a broad, shield-like shape. The volcano has anomalously low slopes, probably due to the high effusion rates of the erupting lavas. We suggest that the Tamu Massif could be the largest single volcano on Earth and that it is comparable in size to the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons on Mars. Our data document a class of oceanic volcanoes that is distinguished by its size and morphology from the thousands of seamounts found throughout the oceans.

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Figure 1: Shatsky Rise bathymetry45 and tectonic map.
Figure 2: Lithology of Tamu Massif igneous sections and comparison with ODP Site 1185 on Ontong Java Plateau.
Figure 3: MCS reflection Line A–B, across the axis of Tamu Massif.
Figure 4: MCS reflection Line C–D, along the axis of Tamu Massif.
Figure 5: Enlargement of a portion of the MCS reflection Line A–B to show intra-basement reflector detail.

Change history

  • 06 September 2013

    In the version of this Article originally published online, the published online date should have read '5 September 2013'. This has been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

This research used data provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. IODP is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under management by Consortium for Ocean Leadership. We thank the captain and crew onboard the R/V Marcus G. Langseth for assistance in collecting seismic data. We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Robert Steinhaus and his team for seismic data acquisition. This research was supported by NSF grants OCE-0926611 and OCE-0926945.

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Seismic data were collected by W.W.S., J.Z. and J.K., with processing by J.Z. Authors W.W.S., A.A.P.K., J.J.M., T.S. and M.W. collaborated on IODP Expedition 324 and assimilated those findings into this study. The manuscript was written by W.W.S. with extensive input from all authors.

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Correspondence to William W. Sager.

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Sager, W., Zhang, J., Korenaga, J. et al. An immense shield volcano within the Shatsky Rise oceanic plateau, northwest Pacific Ocean. Nature Geosci 6, 976–981 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1934

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