Collaborative Research: Dynamics of eruptive plumes above a submarine arc volcano

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The ability to maximize usage and develop new tools for exploring the ocean, in particular the behavior and features that occur within the water column is important both for US oceanographic research capacity as well as increasing the effectiveness of investment in sea-going platforms and infrastructure. This research explores the possibility of expanding the capability of multi-beam sonar systems recently installed on some ships in the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet. The research will consist of analyzing mid-water sonar soundings serendipitiously collected on a cruise of exploration to Rota 1, an actively erupting undersea volcano in the western Pacific Ocean, while investigators were studying the eruption dynamics and volcanological deposits from the volcano. During the cruise, it became evident that the new sonar ws able to inage volcanic gasses that were emmanating from the eruption and being expressed as trains of bubbles coming from the volcanic vent. Research will include examination and processing of the new sonar data to try and extract eruption plume height, intensity, and direction as well as how these change with time. It will also compare the mid-water plume results to visual and chemical data collected for purposes of the originally funded project so that the results can be calibrated with complementary physical measurements taken by remotely controlled submarine vehicles that were simultaneously operating in the area. A major goal of this newly funded work will be to gauge the usefulness of mid-water multibeam bubble train datasets and find out what can be learned from these data in terms of understanding undesea volcanic activity. If successful, the same techniques could be applied to better understand low temperature seeps on continental margins and bubble trains associated with marine gas hydrate deposits. Broader impacts of the work include the development of new infrastructure for science by developing a new mid-water imaging capability for multi-beam sonar on UNOLS ships and graduate student training.