Hydrothermal activity at the Arctic mid-ocean ridges

• Main Authors: Pedersen, Rolf B., Thorseth, Ingunn H., Nygård, Tor Eivind, Lilley, Marvin D., Kelley, Deborah S.
• Other Authors: Rona, Peter A., Devey, Colin W., Dyment, Jerome, Murton, Bramley J.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: AGU (American Geophysical Union) 2010
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/59477/; https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/59477/1/Pedersen.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GM000783

Over the last 10 years, hydrothermal activity has been shown to be abundant at the ultraslow spreading Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridges (AMOR). Approximately 20 active and extinct vent sites have been located either at the seafloor, as seawater anomalies, or by dredge sampling hydrothermal deposits. Decreasing spreading rates and decreasing influence of the Icelandic hot spot toward the north along the AMOR result in a north-south change from a shallow and magmatically robust to a deep and magmatically starved ridge system. This contrast gives rise to large variability in the ridge geology and in the nature of the associated hydrothermal systems. The known vent sites at the southern part of the ridge system are either low-temperature or white smoker fields. At the deep, northern parts of the ridge system, a large black smoker field has been located, and seawater anomalies and sulfide deposits suggest that black smoker-type venting is common. Several of these fields may be peridotite-hosted. The hydrothermal activity at parts of the AMOR exceeds by a factor of 2 to 3 what would be expected by extrapolating from observations on faster spreading ridges. Higher fracture/fault area relative to the magma volume extracted seems a likely explanation for this. Many of the vent fields at the AMOR are associated with axial volcanic ridges. Strong focusing of magma toward these ridges, deep rifting of the ridges, and subsequent formation of long-lived detachment faults that are rooted below the ridges may be the major geodynamic mechanisms causing the unexpectedly high hydrothermal activity.