Active Submarine Volcanoes and Electro-Optical Sensor Networks: The Potential of Capturing and Quantifying an Entire Eruptive Sequence at Axial Seamount, Juan de Fuca Ridge
Abstract
The NE Pacific Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) component of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative is designed to provide unprecedented electrical power and bandwidth to the base and summit of Axial Seamount. The scientific community is engaged in identifying a host of existing and innovative observation and measurement techniques that utilize the high-power and bandwidth infrastructure and its real-time transmission capabilities. The cable, mooring, and sensor arrays will enable the first quantitative documentation of myriad processes leading up to, during, and following a submarine volcanic event. Currently planned RSN instrument arrays will provide important and concurrent spatial and temporal constraints on earthquake activity, melt migration, hydrothermal venting behavior and chemistry, ambient currents, microbial community structure, high-definition (HD) still images and HD video streaming from the vents, and water-column chemistry in the overlying ocean. Anticipated, but not yet funded, additions will include AUVs and gliders that continually document the spatial-temporal variations in the water column above the volcano and the distal zones. When an eruption appears imminent the frequency of sampling will be increased remotely, and the potential of repurposing the tracking capabilities of the mobile sensing platforms will be adapted to the spatial indicators of likely eruption activity. As the eruption begins mobile platforms will fully define the geometry, temperature, and chemical-microbial character of the volcanic plume as it rises into the thoroughly documented control volume above the volcano. Via the Internet the scientific community will be able to witness and direct adaptive sampling in response to changing conditions of plume formation. A major goal will be to document the eruptive volume and link the eruption duration to the volume of erupted magma. For the first time, it will be possible to begin to quantify the time-integrated output of an underwater volcanic eruption linked to the heat, chemical, and biological fluxes. In the late stages of the event, the dissipation of the "event plume" into the surrounding water column and the plume's migration patterns in the ambient regional flow will be tracked using specifically designed mobile sensor-platforms. The presence of these assets opens the potential for more immediate, coordinated, and thorough event responses than the community has previously been able to mount. Given the relative abundance of information on many variables in a verifiable and archived spatial and temporal context, and the rapidly evolving ability to conduct real-time genomic analyses, our community may be able to secure entirely novel organisms that are released into the overlying ocean only under well-characterized eruptive conditions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.V14C..08D
- Keywords:
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- 8416 VOLCANOLOGY / Mid-oceanic ridge processes;
- 8424 VOLCANOLOGY / Hydrothermal systems