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Researchers have discovered a large amount of water trapped within the sediments and rocks of a lost volcanic plateau, now deep inside the Earth's crust.
Geological imaging equipment being towed behind a research vessel during a survey of the Hikurangi subduction zone in New Zealand. Photo: Adrien Arnulf
Revealed through 3D seismic imaging, the ancient water reservoir lies at a depth of 3.2 km beneath the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand, where it may alleviate stress on a major earthquake fault across from North Island, Phys.org reported on October 8.
Faults often generate slow-slip earthquakes, known as slow slip events. These can release tectonic pressure harmlessly over several days and weeks. Scientists want to understand why they occur more frequently at some faults than others. Many slow-slip earthquakes are thought to be related to buried water. However, previously, there was no direct geological evidence indicating such a large water reservoir exists at a fault in New Zealand.
"We haven't been able to observe deep enough to know exactly how it affects the fault, but we can see that the amount of water accumulating here is much higher than normal," said Andrew Gase, the lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas (UTIG).
The study published in the journal Science Advances is based on seismic surveys and ocean drilling conducted by the research team at UTIG. Gase, now a postdoctoral fellow at Western Washington University, calls for deeper drilling to explore the reservoir's extent to determine whether it affects the pressure around the fault. This information is crucial for better understanding significant earthquakes.
The location where researchers found the water reservoir belongs to a vast volcanic region formed when a massive column of magma the size of the United States rose to the Earth's surface in the Pacific 125 million years ago. This event is one of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth, creating disturbances for several million years. Gase used seismic imaging to construct a 3D image of the ancient volcanic plateau. Through this, he observed sediments that are mostly thick around the buried volcano. Gase's colleagues at UTIG conducted experiments with core samples of volcanic rock and found that water occupies nearly half of its volume.
Gase theorizes that the shallow sea where the eruption occurred eroded part of the volcano into porous rock that stores water like an aquifer. Over time, the rocks and debris transformed into clay that accumulated even more water. The new findings are significant because researchers believe that subsurface water pressure may be a key factor in creating conditions for tectonic pressure release through slow-slip earthquakes. This typically occurs when water-rich sediments are buried alongside a fault, holding water underground. However, the faults in New Zealand contain very little of this type of normal ocean sediment. Instead, the research team suggests that ancient volcanic rock and metamorphic clay carry large volumes of water when engulfed by the fault.
Read the article here
Geological imaging equipment being towed behind a research vessel during a survey of the Hikurangi subduction zone in New Zealand. Photo: Adrien Arnulf
Revealed through 3D seismic imaging, the ancient water reservoir lies at a depth of 3.2 km beneath the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand, where it may alleviate stress on a major earthquake fault across from North Island, Phys.org reported on October 8.
Faults often generate slow-slip earthquakes, known as slow slip events. These can release tectonic pressure harmlessly over several days and weeks. Scientists want to understand why they occur more frequently at some faults than others. Many slow-slip earthquakes are thought to be related to buried water. However, previously, there was no direct geological evidence indicating such a large water reservoir exists at a fault in New Zealand.
"We haven't been able to observe deep enough to know exactly how it affects the fault, but we can see that the amount of water accumulating here is much higher than normal," said Andrew Gase, the lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas (UTIG).
The study published in the journal Science Advances is based on seismic surveys and ocean drilling conducted by the research team at UTIG. Gase, now a postdoctoral fellow at Western Washington University, calls for deeper drilling to explore the reservoir's extent to determine whether it affects the pressure around the fault. This information is crucial for better understanding significant earthquakes.
The location where researchers found the water reservoir belongs to a vast volcanic region formed when a massive column of magma the size of the United States rose to the Earth's surface in the Pacific 125 million years ago. This event is one of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth, creating disturbances for several million years. Gase used seismic imaging to construct a 3D image of the ancient volcanic plateau. Through this, he observed sediments that are mostly thick around the buried volcano. Gase's colleagues at UTIG conducted experiments with core samples of volcanic rock and found that water occupies nearly half of its volume.
Gase theorizes that the shallow sea where the eruption occurred eroded part of the volcano into porous rock that stores water like an aquifer. Over time, the rocks and debris transformed into clay that accumulated even more water. The new findings are significant because researchers believe that subsurface water pressure may be a key factor in creating conditions for tectonic pressure release through slow-slip earthquakes. This typically occurs when water-rich sediments are buried alongside a fault, holding water underground. However, the faults in New Zealand contain very little of this type of normal ocean sediment. Instead, the research team suggests that ancient volcanic rock and metamorphic clay carry large volumes of water when engulfed by the fault.
Read the article here
