Planning and Coordination or the RIDGE Program

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The present award will support continued community planning for the RIDGE initiative ( Ridge InterDisciplinary Global Experiments). The key scientific objectives of this initiative are set forth in the National Academy of Sciences Report, "The Mid-Ocean Ridge - A Dynamic Global System". The major goal of RIDGE is to understand the geophysical, geochemical, and geobiological causes and consequences of the energy transfer associated with the global ridge system and the creation of new oceanic crust. Six high priority problem areas have been defined for the RIDGE Program: *The flow of mantle,the generation of melt, and the transport of magmas beneath mid-ocean ridges *The processes which transform magma into oceanic crust *The processes that control the segmentation and episodicity of lithosphere accretion *The physical, chemical, and biological processes involved in the interactions between circulating seawater and the solid lithosphere *The interactions of organisms with the physical and chemical environments in submarine hydrothermal systems *The distribution and intensity of mid-ocean hydrothermal venting and the influence which vents have on the ocean environment The objective of the next two years of planning is to translate the recommendations of the National Academy report into a scientifically focused research program. The planning activity will involve both U.S. and international marine scientists and will be coordinated through a U.S. planning office at the University of Washington.