This award supports a project to process and interpret a suite of large-offset seismic profiles collected in the Victoria Land Basin (VLB) of the Ross Sea using an airgun array as a source and ocean bottom seiemometers as receivers. This experiment is part of an onshore-offshore experiment to study the deep structure of the VLB/Transantarctic Mountain system. Partial logistical support has been provided by the German Antarctic North Victoria Land Experiment (GANOVEX V). Multichannel seismic reflection data show that the VLB is a deep (at least 10km) basin that began forming by extension in the Late Cretaceous or Early Cenzoic. That it is still active today is indicated by the presence of active volcanoes where the basin intersects the coast and by many short-wavelength, high-amplitude offshore magnetic features interpreted to be volcanos and subseafloor intrusions. Extension of the VLB has been accompanied by rapid coeval uplift of the adjacent Transantarctic Mountains. Deep crustal information from rift zones, such as the VLB, is needed to quantify the volume of melt associated with rifting and its relationship to pre-rift tectonic history, large-scale plate tectonic setting, and rifting age.
