The Bend in the Louisville Hotspot Chain: Comparison with the Hawaiian-Emperor Elbow

University Of California-San Diego Scripps Inst Of Oceanography, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Louisville seamount chain is one of the best places to test hypotheses related to the eruptive history of a major hotspot chain and motion of a hotspot plume. The project will acquire geophysical data and geologic samples from the Louisville chain to answer fundamental questions about the relative motion of the Pacific plate and Louisville hotspot plume over the past 80 M.y. The acquired data will also serve to define drilling targets for a possible IODP program in the future. The researchers plan to dredge seafloor rocks, conduct extensive total-field and three-component magnetic surveys, use multibeam and Chirp techniques to map the seafloor, and apply high-resolution seismic methods to image the subseafloor during an oceanographic cruise along 2900 km of the Louisville chain, and, along with collaborators, they will conduct chemical and geochronologic analyses on rocks from 25 sites. They will also compare their results with data from the better-studied Hawaiian chain.