Publication Date:
2022-06-06
Description:
© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Teske, A., McKay, L. J., Ravelo, A. C., Aiello, I., Mortera, C., Núñez-Useche, F., Canet, C., Chanton, J. P., Brunner, B., Hensen, C., Ramírez, G. A., Sibert, R. J., Turner, T., White, D., Chambers, C. R., Buckley, A., Joye, S. B., Soule, S. A., & Lizarralde, D. Characteristics and evolution of sill-driven off-axis hydrothermalism in Guaymas Basin - the Ringvent site. Scientific Reports, 9(1), (2019): 13847, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50200-5.
Description:
The Guaymas Basin spreading center, at 2000 m depth in the Gulf of California, is overlain by a thick sedimentary cover. Across the basin, localized temperature anomalies, with active methane venting and seep fauna exist in response to magma emplacement into sediments. These sites evolve over thousands of years as magma freezes into doleritic sills and the system cools. Although several cool sites resembling cold seeps have been characterized, the hydrothermally active stage of an off-axis site was lacking good examples. Here, we present a multidisciplinary characterization of Ringvent, an ~1 km wide circular mound where hydrothermal activity persists ~28 km northwest of the spreading center. Ringvent provides a new type of intermediate-stage hydrothermal system where off-axis hydrothermal activity has attenuated since its formation, but remains evident in thermal anomalies, hydrothermal biota coexisting with seep fauna, and porewater biogeochemical signatures indicative of hydrothermal circulation. Due to their broad potential distribution, small size and limited life span, such sites are hard to find and characterize, but they provide critical missing links to understand the complex evolution of hydrothermal systems.
Description:
This work was funded by NSF OCE grant 1449604 “Rapid Proposal: Guaymas Basin site survey cruise for IODP proposal 833” to Andreas Teske; NSF C-DEBI grant “Characterizing subseafloor life and environments in Guaymas Basin” to Andreas Teske, Ivano Aiello and Ana Christina Ravelo; and collaborative NSF Biological Oceanography grants 1357238 and 1357360 “Collaborative Research: Microbial carbon cycling and its interaction with sulfur and nitrogen transformations in Guaymas Basin hydrothermal sediments” to Andreas Teske and Samantha B. Joye, respectively. We thank the Alvin and Sentry teams for a stellar performance during Guaymas Basin cruise AT37-06, and the science crew of RV El Puma for their dedication, skill, and “can-do” collaborative spirit during the 2014 Guaymas coring campaign. Sequencing of bacterial and archaeal communities was supported by the Deep Carbon Observatory, and performed at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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