Volcanology Commons^™

The Recent Volcanic History Of Axial Seamount: Geophysical Insights Into Past Eruption Dynamics With An Eye Toward Enhanced Observations Of Future Eruptions, William Wilcock, Robert Dziak, Maya Tolstoy, William Chadwick, Scott Nooner, Delwayne Bohnenstiel, Jacqueline Caplan-Auerbach, Felix Waldhauser, Adrien Amulf, Christian Ballard, Tai-Kwan Lau, Joseph Haxel, Yen Joe Tan, Charles Garcia, Samuel Levy, M. Everett Mann

Geology Faculty Publications

To understand the processes that form oceanic crust as well as the role of submarine volcanoes in exchanging heat and chemicals with the ocean and in supporting chemosynthetic biological communities, it is essential to study underwater eruptions. The world’s most advanced underwater volcano observatory—the Ocean Observatories Initiative Cabled Array at Axial Seamount—builds upon ~30 years of sustained geophysical monitoring at this site with autonomous and remote systems. In April 2015, only months after the Cabled Array’s installation, it recorded an eruption at Axial Seamount, adding to the records of two prior eruptions in 1998 and 2011. Between eruptions, magma recharge …