InterRidge Working Groups

The following is a preliminary set of questions to be addressed, which will be refined with the input of participants of the workshop and other meetings, and online contributions:

How frequent is catastrophic failure in submarine slopes? How important are small compared with large movements in terms of net volume? What are the implications of these disturbances for ecosystem functioning on island slopes? Does it lead to significant burial of organic carbon? Can we link faults already mapped on land with signs of recent deformation in shallow-marine geophysical data to improve estimates of earthquake risk to local populations?

1) Understand the geological factors that contribute for the formation, distribution and preservation of seafloor massive sulfide deposits, including geological and tectonic setting;
2) Characterize the geological, geophysical and geochemical signatures that allow for the detection and documentation of inactive and buried sulfide deposits at Mid-Ocean Ridge-axis or off-axis settings;
3) Identify multi-scale observations that could be used to predict past, present and possibly future hydrothermal deposit formation;
4) Determine the spatial distribution pattern and resource potential of mid ocean ridges with various spreading rates;
5) Understand the timing and variations in the geological drivers for hydrothermal activity across mid-ocean ridge segment-scale systems;
6) Determine the dimensional structure and metal inventory for mid-ocean spreading ridges based on long-term heat flow, volcanism, fluid fluxes and sedimentation rates;
7) Understand the processes of seafloor and sub-seafloor sulfide formation, weathering, and their impact on crust-to-water column exchange in metals.

To focus on five questions that are likely of large interest to the Earth sciences community:

- How do large and mega- transform domains react to both far- and near-field stress changes?

- How do transforms interact with the underlying mantle. What are the effects of temperature, rheology and composition?

- What is the interplay between transform dynamics and magmatism?

- Which relationship exist between oceanic transform faults and their counterparts on continental margins?

- Are oceanic transform faults sites of intense fluid-rock interaction and biogeochemical exchange?