Collaborative Research: Dynamics of eruptive plumes above a submarine arc volcano

最大限度地利用和开发探索海洋的新工具的能力，特别是在水柱内发生的行为和特征，对美国海洋学研究能力以及提高海上平台和基础设施投资的有效性都很重要。本研究探讨了最近安装在大学国家海洋实验室系统（UNOLS）船队的一些船上的多波束声纳系统扩展能力的可能性。该研究将包括分析在西太平洋海底火山Rota 1号的探测巡航中偶然收集的水中声纳声音，同时调查人员正在研究火山的喷发动力学和火山沉积物。在巡航过程中，很明显，新的声纳能够成像火山气体，这些气体是从火山喷发中释放出来的，并表现为从火山口喷出的一连串气泡。研究将包括检查和处理新的声纳数据，试图提取喷发羽流的高度、强度和方向，以及它们如何随时间变化。它还将把中间水羽的结果与为最初资助的项目所收集的视觉和化学数据进行比较，以便可以用同时在该地区作业的远程控制潜艇所进行的补充物理测量来校准结果。这项新资助的工作的一个主要目标是衡量水中多波束气泡列数据集的有用性，并找出可以从这些数据中学到什么，以了解海底火山活动。如果成功，同样的技术可以应用于更好地了解大陆边缘的低温渗漏和与海洋天然气水合物矿床相关的气泡列车。这项工作的更广泛影响包括发展新的科学基础设施，为联卢行动船上的多波束声呐开发新的水中成像能力，并培训研究生。

The ability to maximize usage and develop new tools for exploring the ocean, in particular the behavior and features that occur within the water column is important both for US oceanographic research capacity as well as increasing the effectiveness of investment in sea-going platforms and infrastructure. This research explores the possibility of expanding the capability of multi-beam sonar systems recently installed on some ships in the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet. The research will consist of analyzing mid-water sonar soundings serendipitiously collected on a cruise of exploration to Rota 1, an actively erupting undersea volcano in the western Pacific Ocean, while investigators were studying the eruption dynamics and volcanological deposits from the volcano. During the cruise, it became evident that the new sonar ws able to inage volcanic gasses that were emmanating from the eruption and being expressed as trains of bubbles coming from the volcanic vent. Research will include examination and processing of the new sonar data to try and extract eruption plume height, intensity, and direction as well as how these change with time. It will also compare the mid-water plume results to visual and chemical data collected for purposes of the originally funded project so that the results can be calibrated with complementary physical measurements taken by remotely controlled submarine vehicles that were simultaneously operating in the area. A major goal of this newly funded work will be to gauge the usefulness of mid-water multibeam bubble train datasets and find out what can be learned from these data in terms of understanding undesea volcanic activity. If successful, the same techniques could be applied to better understand low temperature seeps on continental margins and bubble trains associated with marine gas hydrate deposits. Broader impacts of the work include the development of new infrastructure for science by developing a new mid-water imaging capability for multi-beam sonar on UNOLS ships and graduate student training.