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

留尼汪热点至少在过去70万年里一直很活跃，并在印度洋的印度和非洲构造板块上留下了自己的印记。在非洲板块上，马斯卡林脊与一个明显的正大地面异常相吻合，类似于夏威夷的膨胀，表明地形负荷的明显补偿在岩石圈或软流圈深处。利用一艘驻扎在印度洋的法国研究船，PI将进行适当的热流测量，以确定深层补偿在多大程度上可以用静态热异常来解释，或者它是否主要是由活跃的地幔对流导致的动态支持，就像夏威夷热点现在出现的那样。热流和其他地球物理场将用数值方法模拟。

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.