Seamount abundances and distributions in the southeast Pacific

Details Seamount abundances and distributions in the southeast Pacific Seamount abundances and distributions in the southeast Pacific

Jan 1988

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1988e%26psl..87..137a&link_type=abstract

Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 87, Issue 1-2, p. 137-151.

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Sea Beam bathymetry was recorded for 17,277 km of ship track in the southeast Pacific and has been analyzed for seamount population characteristics. All the ship tracks are over the Pacific plate and most fall along 7 lines parallel to the East Pacific Rise between 7°S and 22°S. The lines fall into three age categories: one line is over 0.5-2 Ma crust, three are over 5-10 Ma crust, and three are over 30-40 Ma crust. Seamount locations were recorded, diameters were manually estimated, and heights were measured if the swath crossed the seamount center. Over 382 features were counted along the entire ship track with heights ranging from 50 m to over 2500 m, with sampling most consistent at heights between 100 m and 1000 m. Height-to-radius ratios vary considerably, suggesting that seamount shapes do not scale to a single parameter. The observed variety of morphological forms demonstrates that there is a wide range of seamount shapes for small features. The distribution of sizes for the population was approximated by exponential dependence and by power-law dependence using methods developed by Smith and Jordan [17]. The power-law distribution overestimates abundances at the smallest size ranges and both distributions fail to predict abundances of large seamounts determined from wide-beam data [17]. Size distributions were also determined for seamounts in each seafloor age category. Almost all small seamounts appear to be produced on crust younger than 0.5-2 Ma, while the number of larger seamounts increases to 5-10 Ma. For all size ranges observed here the number of seamounts at 5-10 Ma and at 30-40 Ma is roughly identical. These observations suggest that most small seamounts are formed on very young, thin lithosphere that permits the passage of small volumes of magma. Small volumes would cool in older, thicker lithosphere before reaching the surface although larger magma bodies might not. Numerous small sources of melt must exist near the ridge crest to supply the small seamounts, probably trapped remnants of the large-scale upwelling.

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