One of the best studied sites on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a mid-ocean ridge spreading center off the northwestern coast of the US, is the Endeavor Ridge Segment. This area has been extensively mapped and sampled over the last 10 years by the NSF-funded Ridge 2000 Program whose objective is to dramatically advance our understanding of mid-ocean ridge magmatic, seismic, hydrothermal, and biological systems, how they behave, and how they are linked together. The funded project focuses on correcting navigation errors in sample/feature locations and compiling data from NSF and non-NSF funded cruises and studies to create a high resolution, integrated map of geological and geochemical features/attributes. The juxtaposition of these disparate datasets will enable big-picture, integrated thinking about how these important volcanic systems operate, will allow comparison of this area with other parts of the globe-encircling mid-ocean ridge system, and will illuminate the processes that control volcanism and hydrothermal venting at mid-ocean ridges. Broader impacts of the work include support of graduate and undergraduate students, a postdoc, and a PI whose gender is under-represented in the sciences.
The Endeavour Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge is one of the most well-studied submarine hydrothermal systems on Earth - it is also one of the most active, hosting five foot-ball field-sized hydrothermal fields over a distance of 15 km and >800 individual active and extinct chimneys. Here the submarine hot springs made from metal sulfides rise >100 ft above the seafloor. For nearly three decades, this area has been the focus of numerous NSF- and foundation-funded research expeditions using the three person submersible Alvin, tethered remotely operated vehicles (ROV's e,g, Jason, ROPOS and Tiburon) and untethered autonomous underwater vehicles (e.g. ABE, Sentry, D. Allan B.). A major goal of this NSF-funded project was to compile rich and diverse bathymetric data sets collected with multibeam bathymetry systems on the research ship the R/V Thompson, and the AUV's ABE and D. Allan over a several year period and compile them into a 1-5 m resolution map of this dynamic mid-ocean ridge system. The second major goal, was to compile and renavigate ROV and Alvin dive data (a difficult undertaking that had not been done before), reprocessess these data, and provide the highest possible re-navigated dive tracks. These were then "placed" on the high resolution bathymetry - providing geo-referenced track lines to key features (e.g. active black smokers) of interest. This bathymetric work was completed in collaboration with researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (D. Clague and D. Caress), and the vehicle re-navigation work was completed by a University of Washington (UW), School of Oceanography master's student A. Denny. The result is a stunning bathymetric (topographic) map of all of the major vent fields that are hosted within this linear, rifted mid-ocean ridge volcano. Zooming in on the bathymetry allows identification of individual black smokers that have been pumping out >700•F fluids since the fields were first found in early 1980 (see figure produced by D. Kelley, J. Delaney and the Center for Environmental Visualization at the UW. All vehicle survey lines are now available in high resolution images showing the path of the vehicles above the seafloor during the dives and with respect to know black smoker edifices. All data are available through the Marine Geoscience Data System hosted at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University (www.marine-geo.org/index.php).
