The Recent Volcanic History of Axial Seamount: Geophysical Insights into Past Eruption Dynamics with an Eye Toward Enhanced Observations of Future Eruptions

William Wilcock,Maya Tolstoy,Scott Nooner,Tai-Kwan Lau,M Everett Mann,Robert Dziak,Jacqueline Caplan-Auerbach,William Chadwick,Felix Waldhauser,Christian Ballard,Charles Garcia,Yen Joe Tan,Delwayne Bohnenstiel,Joseph Haxel,Adrien Arnulf,Samuel Levy

doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.117

Abstract

The Recent Volcanic History of Axial Seamount: Geophysical Insights into Past Eruption Dynamics with an Eye Toward Enhanced Observations of Future Eruptions

Highlights

There is a long history of supporting volcano observatories on land, where studies are motivated by the dual goals of mitigating the risks of eruptions and improving our scientific understanding of the role volcanoes play in transferring material and heat from the mantle and in forming Earth’s crust
Because the timescales for diking, the onset of eruptions, and the formation of event plumes are hours to days, expeditions that arrive on site after a week or more are limited to observing the aftermath of these key processes
These timing considerations motivated the installations of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cabled Array at Axial Seamount (Figure 1), an active volcano in the Northeast Pacific Ocean at the intersection of the Juan de Fuca Ridge oceanic spreading center and Cobb-Eickelberg seamount chain

Summary

INTRODUCTION

There is a long history of supporting volcano observatories on land, where studies are motivated by the dual goals of mitigating the risks of eruptions and improving our scientific understanding of the role volcanoes play in transferring material and heat from the mantle and in forming Earth’s crust. Because the timescales for diking, the onset of eruptions, and the formation of event plumes are hours to days, expeditions that arrive on site after a week or more are limited to observing the aftermath of these key processes. These timing considerations motivated the installations of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cabled Array at Axial Seamount (Figure 1), an active volcano in the Northeast Pacific Ocean at the intersection of the Juan de Fuca Ridge oceanic spreading center and Cobb-Eickelberg seamount chain. Differences between pre- and post-eruption bathymetry, coupled with sidescan data and seafloor observations, show that lava flows extended from the southeast caldera about 11 km down the

Schematic In ation Threshold for Eruptions

45.4 Jan 25