|
| |
Better Understanding Global Rifts Through RIDGE
From: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
| By:
|
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Interdisciplinary scientific work is especially important in oceanography, where geologists, biologists, chemists and engineers all must work together and share information to further their specific research interests. The RIDGE Program has been conducting interdisciplinary research cruises since 1991 and has helped scientists make numerous important discoveries over the years about the global rift system in the world's oceans. |
 he RIDGE (Ridge Inter-Disciplinary Global Experiments) Program, a major National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative, was established "to understand the geophysical, geochemical, and geobiological causes and consequences of the energy transfer within the global rift system through time." The program was developed at a 1987 National Academy of Sciences workshop; its first research cruises sailed in 1991, and its current science plan continues through 2003. To date, RIDGE research has been conducted by 120 scientists based at some 50 institutions. |
RIDGE's objectives are twofold: 1) to provide a focus for coordinated, interdisciplinary research into the geologic and geodynamic processes related to the creation of oceanic lithosphere, and 2) to provide a framework within which diverse, innovative, investigator-initiated research can be undertaken. Some specific achievements of the RIDGE Program over the past five years include: |
- Discovery of unexpectedly rapid changes, especially in hydrothermal activity and vent communities, in the immediate aftermath of an eruption.
- Real-time monitoring and response to magmatic events on ridges in the Northeast Pacific (in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
- Discovery of a subsurface microbial biosphere within the oceanic crust, representing a biomass previously unknown on Earth.
- Recognition of the wide range of tectonic settings and diversity of fauna associated with Mid-Atlantic Ridge hydrothermal areas.
- Development of quantitative, observation-based models that explain the sensitivity of ridge axis topography to variables such as spreading rate, magma supply, and axial thermal structure.
- Establishment of a global digital database for mid-ocean ridge bathymetric data for specific parts of the global ridge system.
- Definition of the small size of crustal magma bodies at even the fastest spreading ridges.
- Recognition of the importance of buoyancy-driven flow in controlling both the narrowness of mantle upwelling in a cross-axis sense and the three-dimensionality of upwelling along-axis.
- Mapping and reconnaissance rock sampling of previously unexplored supersegments (long segments that typically extend 1,000 to 2,000 kilometers) in the global mid-ocean ridge system.
- The first measurements of plate motion on a mid-ocean ridge.
- Provision of the first images of melt distribution in the upper mantle beneath a mid-ocean ridge by the MELT (Mantle ELectromagnetic and Tomography) Experiment.
|
|
| |
