Chinese researchers unveil formation of worldwide seamounts

BEIJING — Using a self-developed mannequin, Chinese scientists have uncovered the origin of worldwide seamounts and recreated the subduction historical past of the final 270 million years.

According to their examine revealed within the journal Nature Geoscience, the formation and evolution of each linearly extending seamount chains and scattered remoted seamounts are intimately related to the thermal actions of the asthenosphere pushed by the upwelling of mantle plumes from the core-mantle boundary.

Latest surveys reveal there are over 40,000 seamounts in almost each ocean basin, dispersed at random all through the world’s oceanic plates.

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The standard hotspot speculation means that high-temperature mantle plumes originating from the highest of the Earth’s core set off melting of rocks beneath drifting plates, thereby forming lengthy chains of submarine volcanoes in areas such because the Hawaiian Islands.

However, solely a restricted variety of seamount chains, completely over 50 of them, echo such speculation. This reveals a big mismatch between the hotspot mannequin and the precise amount, scale and spatial distribution of worldwide seamounts.

This poses a crucial query: Do all seamounts originate from hotspots and mantle plumes? And if that’s the case, how can so few hotspots produce so many seamounts unfold throughout the globe?

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Researchers used a worldwide knowledge assimilation mannequin to duplicate present mantle plume hotspot areas and asthenosphere thermal construction. They additionally predicted the spatiotemporal evolution of key hotspots like Hawaii and their corresponding deep mantle plumes.

In the Pacific area, as an illustration, through the early stage of mantle plume upwelling, a big quantity of sizzling plume materials accrued beneath the younger Pacific plate, making a broad thermal anomaly within the asthenosphere, in keeping with the examine.

During the following evolution, mantle plumes might cut up from the basis throughout the decrease mantle or the center a part of the mantle transition zone, producing secondary mantle plumes. This additional elevated the variety of shallow hotspots and supplied situations for the formation of further seamount chains.

This mechanism gives a unified framework for the formation of intraplate seamounts worldwide, considerably increasing the classical mantle plume speculation, stated Liu Lijun, a researcher with the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The simulation was carried out on the new-generation Tianhe supercomputer on the National SuperComputer Center in Tianjin, north China.