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ME 154-2

RV METEOR from 04/28/2019 to 05/23/2019 to Montserrat Island, Carribian

Impressions

Ansicht Montserrat
Montserrat Island
Heck
Kern bergen
Getting a core on board
Arbeitsergebnisse
Results of our work
MeBo
MeBo about to get to work
Sonnenuntergang
At the end of the day

Sector collapse kinematics and tsunami implications - SEKT

Deep-seated col­lapses of vol­canic is­lands have gen­er­ated the largest volume mass flows world­wide. These mass flows might trig­ger mega-tsuna­mis. The way in which these col­lapse events are em­placed is poorly un­der­stood, even though this em­place­ment pro­cess de­term­ines the scale of as­so­ci­ated tsuna­mis.

Key ques­tions such as (1) whether they are em­placed in single or mul­tiple events, (2) how they may in­cor­por­ate sea­floor sed­i­ment to in­crease their volume, and(3) how they are re­lated to vol­canic erup­tion cycles and mi­gra­tion of vol­canic cen­ters, still re­main to be answered.

This pro­ject will form a part of the com­pre­hens­ive study of large vol­canic is­land land­slide de­pos­its and is dir­ectly linked to IODP drilling cam­paign in the Lesser An­ti­lles (IODP Leg 340). Un­for­tu­nately, Leg 340 only re­covered ma­ter­ial from a single site within the vol­canic land­slide de­pos­its off Mont­ser­rat, and even at this site re­cov­ery was not con­tinu­ous. This single IODP site is in­suf­fi­cient to doc­u­ment lat­eral vari­ation in land­slide char­ac­ter, which is crit­ical for un­der­stand­ing how it was em­placed. 

Com­bin­ing 3D seis­mo­logy (M154-1 Leg 1) and MeBo cores (M154-2 Leg 2) will provide a unique data­set of the in­ternal struc­ture, com­pos­i­tion and source of ma­ter­ial throughout a vol­canic is­land land­slide. The res­ults will sig­ni­fic­antly con­trib­ute to un­der­stand­ing the em­place­ment of vol­canic is­land land­slides and they will al­low us to as­sess the as­so­ci­ated tsunami risk. The main sci­entific goals of this pro­ject areto de­term­ine where the land­slides are sourced from; to un­der­stand how these land­slides are em­placed; and to un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ship between land­slides, erup­tion cycles and ini­ti­ation of new vol­canic centres.

SEKT Logo

 

Contact Chief-Scientist:

Prof. Dr. Katrin Huhn-Frehers

Phone: 

+49 421 218-65860

Fax:

+49 421 218-65872

Email:

Room: 

MARUM II, 3040

Collaboration partners:

  • University of Bremen, Germany
  • GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
  • University of Birmingham, Great-Britain
  • Southern Methodist University Dallas, USA

Scientific Programme M154-2

The over­arch­ing aim of this pro­ject is to provide sed­i­ment and rock samples of the slid masses of dif­fer­ent sub­mar­ine land­slide events off­shore Mont­ser­rat.

The ex­ped­i­tion M154-2 aims to carry out sys­tem­atic drilling tran­sects us­ing the Bre­men sea floor drill rig Me­Bo70 within the area of the slid masses and the ad­ja­cent un­de­formed slope.

The MeBo drill rig is cap­able of cor­ing up to 70m of sub­sur­face sec­tion. This cor­ing op­er­a­tion will be paired with dense sea­floor sed­i­ment sampling us­ing clas­sical grav­ity cor­ing and grab sampling. Core ma­ter­i­als will en­able to gain a deeper in­sight into sed­i­ment com­pos­i­tion as well as their geo­tech­nical char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion. These in­form­a­tion about sed­i­ment-phys­ical be­ha­vior of both de­formed and un­de­formed sed­i­ments are es­sen­tial to test a num­ber of hy­po­theses re­gard­ing their Tsunami po­ten­tial. The em­place­ment dy­nam­ics of these land­slides and their re­la­tion­ship to vol­canic erup­tion cycles or mag­matic evol­u­tion are poorly un­der­stood at present, due to a lack of de­tailed stud­ies of land­slide de­pos­its. Fur­ther­more, these data shed light on the re­la­tion­ship between sub­mar­ine slope fail­ure pro­cesses and vol­canic activ­ity.

The cor­ing op­er­a­tions will be paired with heat-flow meas­ure­ments. 

Scientific Crew M154-2
Scientific Crew M154-2

Weekly Reports

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