Louisville Ridge

The Louisville Ridge, also known as the Louisville Seamount Chain,[1] is an underwater chain of over 70 seamounts in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. As one of the longest seamount chains on Earth it stretches some 4,300 km (2,700 mi)[2] from the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge northwest to the Tonga-Kermadec Trench, where it subducts under the Indo-Australian Plate as part of the Pacific Plate. The chain may have been formed by movement of the Pacific Plate over the Louisville hotspot [3] or by leakage of magma from the shallow mantle up through the Eltanin fracture zone, which it follows closely. [4]

Louisville Ridge
The Louisville Ridge stretches diagonally across this bathymetric map of the southwest Pacific Ocean.
Summit arealength:4,300 km (2,700 mi)
Location
LocationSouthwest Pacific Ocean
Geology
TypeSeamount chain
Volcanic arc/chainHotspot volcanoes
History
Discovery date1972

Depth-sounding data first revealed the existence of the seamount chain in 1972.[5]

Seamounts

The Louisville Ridge includes the following:

  • Burton Seamount
  • Currituck Seamount
  • Danseur Seamount
  • Darvin Guyot
  • Forde Seamount
  • Louisville Seamount
  • Osbourn Seamount
  • Pierson Seamount
  • Rumyantsev Seamount
  • Seafox Seamount
  • Trobriant Seamount
  • Valerie Guyot
  • Vostok Seamount

See also

References
  1. "Marine Gazetteer Placedetails". Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  2. Vanderkluysen, L.; Mahoney, J. J.; Koppers, A. A.; and Lonsdale, P. F. (2007). Geochemical Evolution of the Louisville Seamount Chain, American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #V42B-06.
  3. Koppers, Anthony A. P.; Yamazaki, Toshitsugu; Geldmacher, Jörg; Gee, Jeffrey S.; Pressling, Nicola; Koppers, Anthony A. P.; Yamazaki, Toshitsugu; Geldmacher, Jörg; Gee, Jeffrey S.; Pressling, Nicola; Hoshi, Hiroyuki (December 2012). "Limited latitudinal mantle plume motion for the Louisville hotspot". Nature Geoscience. 5 (12): 911–917. Bibcode:2012NatGe...5..911K. doi:10.1038/ngeo1638. ISSN 1752-0908.
  4. Smith, A. G. (2007). "A plate model for Jurassic to recent intraplate volcanism in the Pacific Ocean basin". In Plates, Plumes, and Planetary Processes, Edited by G.R. Foulger and D.M. Jurdy, Geological Society of America Special Paper 530, Boulder, CO. 430: 471–496.
  5. Sandwell, David T.; Walter H.F. Smith (1997). "Exploring the ocean basins with satellite altimeter data". Satellite Geodesy. La Jolla: Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Retrieved 2010-01-19. The Louisville Ridge was first detected in 1972 using depth soundings collected along random ship crossings of the South Pacific. Six years later the full extent of this chain was revealed by a radar altimeter aboard the Seasat (NASA) spacecraft.
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