The Geo-diversity of Submarine Venting Along Slow Spreading Ridges

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Dr. Chris German of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute will be presenting information on the geo-diversity of submarine venting along slow spreading ridges. German will also be this semester's Woodworth lecturer.  

Throughout the first decade of deep sea hydrothermal research it was argued that hydrothermal activity should only occur along fast spreading ridges and, even when that was disproven with the first vent discoveries in the North Atlantic, an argument persisted that the abundance of such vents should be rare in direct proportion to ridge spreading rate (a proxy for magmatic heat-flux at the ridge axis). In this lecture, German will present results from his own work – primarily along slow and ultra-slow spreading ridges that show that the abundance of hydrothermal activity present is much higher than would be predicted from spreading rate alone and, further, that this “excess” abundance can be attributed to new classes of seafloor venting hosted in geologic conditions not found along fast spreading ridges but which have profound implications for the Earth and Life Sciences, ranging from their economic potential for marine mining and resource extraction to the origins of life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere in the Universe.