The JOIDES Resolution leaves the Harbor of Auckland, New Zealand
IODP Expedition 330 to the Louisville Seamount Trail drilled five underwater volcanoes off the NE coast of New Zealand. One hypothesis states that these volcanoes formed above a narrow plume of hot mantle rising from a position deep in the Earth’s mantle. For decades scientists assumed these mantle plumes remain anchored there for tens of millions years, but there is mounting evidence that mantle plumes wander in a large-scale mantle wind. This expedition aimed to establish how much the Louisville mantle plume moved over the last 80 million years and found that in fact it only experienced limited north-to-south motion at a geological time in which the Hawaiian hotspot showed a large ~15° shift southward.
Posted by Anthony Koppers on Aug 22, 2012
