Eruption of a deep-sea mud volcano triggers rapid sediment movement

• Published in: Nature Communications
• Main Authors: Feseker, Tomas, Boetius, Antje, Wenzhofer, Frank, Blandin, Jerome, Olu, Karine, Yoerger, Dana R., Camilli, Richard, German, Christopher R., de Beer, Dirk
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6952

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5385, doi:10.1038/ncomms6385. Submarine mud volcanoes are important sources of methane to the water column. However, the temporal variability of their mud and methane emissions is unknown. Methane emissions were previously proposed to result from a dynamic equilibrium between upward migration and consumption at the seabed by methane-consuming microbes. Here we show non-steady-state situations of vigorous mud movement that are revealed through variations in fluid flow, seabed temperature and seafloor bathymetry. Time series data for pressure, temperature, pH and seafloor photography were collected over 431 days using a benthic observatory at the active Håkon Mosby Mud Volcano. We documented 25 pulses of hot subsurface fluids, accompanied by eruptions that changed the landscape of the mud volcano. Four major events triggered rapid sediment uplift of more than a metre in height, substantial lateral flow of muds at average velocities of 0.4 m per day, and significant emissions of methane and CO2 from the seafloor. Participation of the Sentry AUV and TETHYS team from WHOI was funded by the Arctic Research Initiative of WHOI’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute and the NASA ASTEP grant NNX09AB76G. Additional funds were made available by the AWI, the Max Planck Society and the DFG METEOR/MERIAN programme, as well as the Leibniz programme to A.B.