Heat Flow and the Mascarene Ridge (Indian Ocean): The Reunion Hot Spot

至少在过去的70年里，留尼汪岛的热点一直很活跃。并在印度洋和非洲的构造板块上留下了印记。在非洲板块上，马斯卡林海脊与显著的大地水准面正异常重合，类似于夏威夷隆起，表明地形载荷的表观补偿位于岩石圈或软流圈的深处。利用一艘位于印度洋的法国研究船，PI将进行适当的热流测量，以确定静态热异常可能在多大程度上解释深层补偿，或者是否主要是由于活动的地幔对流造成的动态支持，正如夏威夷热点现在所显示的那样。热流和其他地球物理场将用数值方法建模。

The Reunion hot spot has been active over at least the past 70 M.y. and has left its mark on the Indian and African tectonic plates of the Indian Ocean. On the African plate, the Mascarene ridge is coincident with a significant positive geoid anomaly, similar to the Hawaiian swell, indicating that the apparent compensation of the topographic load is deep in the lithosphere or asthenosphere. Utilizing a French research vessel based in the Indian Ocean, the PI will make appropriate heat flow measurements to determine the extent to which the deep compensation may be explained by a static thermal anomaly, or whether it is primarily dynamic support as a result of active mantle convection, as the Hawaiian hot spot now appears. The heat flow and other geophysical fields will be modeled with numerical methods.