The Pacific-Antarctic ridge is the key link in the plate circuit describing the relative motion of the plates of the Pacific basin and the surrounding continental terranes. this project involves a shipboard survey of a critical flowline, at high latitude, crossing the Pacific-Antarctic ridge. the objectives of the program are to : (1) construct a high resolution plate kinematic model of the South Pacific for the past 50 Ma; (2) analyze the temporal evolution of both ridge parallel and fracture zone crustal morphology; (3) model the deep structure of fracture zone FZ XII using combined Geosat, Hydrosweep, and gravity data; and (4) evaluate the contributions of chemical remnant magnetization and thermo-viscous magnetization to the source of marine magnetic anomalies.
