Comprehensive Study on the Dynamics of the Mid-oceanic Ridge Sysytem

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This research project is the first large program on the mid-oceanic ridge system. So far the Japanese scientists have been isolated from the dramatic progress of the understanding on the mid-oceanic ridge system. One of the main objectives of this project is to recover this gap to form a national-wide research group on the mid-oceanic ridge system. For this purpose, the budget of the project was divided into each member scientist. We organized two general meetings during two years ; the first meeting is at Inatori, Izu on October 1993, and the second meeting is at Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo on February 1995. Furthermore we convened three scientific sessions in the society meetings ; 1994 Japanese Earth Science Societies Joint Meeting at Sendai, 1995 Joint Meeting at Tokyo, and American Geophysical Union 1994 Fall Meeting at San Francisco. The largest product of this research project is the results of the R/V Hakuho-maru research cruise in the Indian Ocean mid-oceanic ridges that is conducted in 1993 by many of member scientists. The detail of earthquake activities, crustal structure, and magmatism were observed for the first time in the area. We succeeded to present a new tectonic model of the development of the triple junction based on these observed data. Other major products of this research project are studies on the detailed structure of the magnetization of the crust beneath the mid-oceanic ridge, on melt generation process beneath the mid-oceanic ridge by the global earthquake tomographic analyzes, on the thermal structure of the mid-oceanic ridge system, and on the hydrothermal activities of the mid-oceanic ridge system. Through the two year project, we consider we attained the initial objective to vividly promote the activity of the mid-oceanic ridge research in Japan.