Development of northwest Pacific guyots: General results from Ocean Drilling Program legs 143 and 144 |
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| Authors: | Peter Flood |
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| Institution: | Division of Earth Sciences, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia;Email: <> |
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| Abstract: | Results of the Ocean Drilling Program legs 143 and 144, which investigated the nature and origin of seven guyots in the northwest Pacific Ocean, document a history of prolonged volcanism (128–84 Ma), followed by subsidence, accumulation of shallow-water carbonates, emersion following a sea-level fall, then continued subsidence, and drowning. Generally, the life span of a guyot is of the order of 5–20 million years. The stratigraphic sequence in each guyot consists of 3–10 m-thick, shoaling-upward cycles, which display a 100-Ka periodicity perhaps related to sea-level fluctuations. The drilling results indicate that the demise of the shallow-water carbonate platforms is related to either a temporal (110–100 Ma) event or paleolatitude location (0–10°S) involving nutrient-rich water not conducive to production of calcium carbonate by shallow-water organisms. Following emergence and erosion, re-submergence occurred during a rise of sea-level. However, the rate of sediment accumulation was unable to keep pace with the rate of sea-level rise and the guyots drowned. Subsidence continued as the lithospheric plate cooled. The majority of guyots are now at ~ 1500 m below sea-level. Plate movements over the past 100 million years have carried the guyots from ~ 14°S to their current location in the northwest Pacific. Guyots are flat-topped submerged volcanic islands capped by thick sequences of shallow-water carbonates. The flat-top morphology is constructional, not related to wave planation as originally thought and reported in most textbooks. |
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| Keywords: | guyots northwest Pacific Ocean Drilling Program seamounts |
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